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Hello, there. I'm wondering about mapping restriction road signs: on numerous occasions, these restrictions only repeated other restrictions, clearly in order to highlight them, for example:
In such cases, should I map these restrictions as is, or should I be smart, interpret them and only map the intent behind them, letting the routing engines managing them as they want, i.e. map these examples as:
Awaiting your answers, Regards. |
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Always map the intent of signs. Mapping the signs themselves (and particularly repeater signs) is entirely optional, but ultimately may help fellow mappers in cases where particular restrictions, such as speedlimits, change. The community of mappers in Helsinki, Finland moved to mapping the signs and their wiki page (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Finland:Traffic_signs) provides some good reasons for doing so. Broadly speaking mapping signs assists in verification, and helps spot change & errors. |
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I guess it comes down to why you are mapping. :) I have seen areas where a node for each sign it placed adjacent to the highway and, amazingly, the actual information not placed on the ways where it would do routing software any good. I've never understood that as I don't see the use case (no rendering software I am aware of shows those signs and routing software only looks at ways or relations relating to ways). For highway mapping, I personally don't map signs, I map the intent of the signs on the ways. The reason for this is I am interested in having routing software correctly get people to where they want to go. So I'll map the lane marking (for lane guidance), add maxspeed (for better routing and speed warnings while following router instructions), turn restrictions (for legal routing), destination information (for motorway exit guidance), etc. to the appropriate ways. About the only way you'll figure out where the sign was based on my mapping is because of a change in some value (e.g. maxspeed). I do map signs along hiking trails as they are shown by at least a few renders that specialize in back country maps and they are often significant landmarks for a person to use to keep oriented. |
