1: Is it the accepted thing where a road is next to farm land to combine the road “way” with the “border” of the farm land?
I have come across this a number of times while helping with the cloud challenge of finding and fixing duplicate or unmerged ways.
I am thinking it should not be since:
it makes fixing/editing more difficult when ALL the nodes are merged as junctions with the boundry of the farm land.
it implies that the farm land goes right up to the middle/centerline of the highway.
would this mess with routing for gps or mapping?.
2: What is the easiest way to UNmerge or separate nodes that have been combined?
3: Are there going to be future bulk imports from Tiger/Geobase/other into OSM?
If yes, are they going mess up work already done?
Does the OSM server check if something already exists before it gets over written or duplicated by these imports?
The reason I ask is because a lot of the errors and duplications in the cloud challenge seem to have been caused by these imports but hopefully these were “teething” problems.
This may be a stupid idea but:
If the server can’t do these checks, perhaps we could do the import in stages?
Some how have the import in a holding file and let all us OSMers check and compare it to existing work and decide if it is better or more accurate before allowing it to go into the map?
Regarding landuse right up to highways, it sometimes makes sense.
Where I live there is an area of common land which really does go right to the road edge, no hedge or fencing.
In England, at least, this is the exception rather than the rule. I suspect this is the case in many countries but expanses of the American midwest, as another example, may not have fencing or hedging between the road and the fields.
In the long run, high resolution aerial imagery will allow us to trace the fences or hedges and then put the landuse to barrier, rather than to the road. This can be done in small villages and towns already, with a little thought and careful surveying.
Until then many users reuse the nodes existing on the highway rather than creating a way that doesn’t accurately describe the barrier between.
My opinion on #1: I agree that land use boundaries should be kept separate from roads. It becomes increasingly difficult to keep everything separate without editor layers.
#2: With JOSM - for a single node, highlight the node and press G to unglue. For any editor - if the entire road has been used as an administrative boundary, just disconnect the administrative boundary from the road at either end - then draw a new way. If the road is curved, you might be able to mirror the road into a new way that can be connected to the administrative boundary.
3: Regarding TIGER updates : So much work has been done on existing roads that a mass automated import update is unlikely. There is some talk of providing Geo-diffs by area for mappers to download and decide to integrate manually, but nothing definite yet.