highway classification

The following was taken from the main OSM Israel wiki page:

Should this really be residential ?

Edit:
OK, please ignore.
By “Main roads” I assume this implies streets such as Ibn Gvirol in Tel Aviv that really have multiple lanes in each direction.
I assume all other small streets are indeed residential.

tertiary is also used as approach ways to small villages.

Some cities even have main and secondary roads.

motorway is a special road (usually blue signs) that is defined as a motorway, and it doesn’t really go by the road number.
e.g. road 431 is defined as a motorway.

Road 1 is not a motorway from Shaar HaGai to Jerusalem.
Road 2 is a motorway only between Caesarea and Haifa.
Road 4 is a motorway only till Ashdod.
Road 5 is also only partially a motorway (only till Kfar Kasm, or thereabouts)

A few more questions:

  1. Should ANY road that has separate traffic lanes for each directions (separated by a traffic island) be drawn as two one-way roads? Should I draw them as one and then use the P command in Potlatch? Should I fix any roads that I know that are separated by a traffic israld if they are drawn as one bidirectional road? (for exampl, Shlonsky st. at Afeka, Tel Aviv)
  2. How do I draw green areas, parks, and parking lots?

Also, for those who don’t know, there is a very good mapping site for Tel Aviv only - http://gis.tel-aviv.gov.il/iview/ with high resolution aerial photos and many layers of information.

I believe that it would be better to map these bi-directional ways as two different oneway=yes ways.
However, there are a few things to remember:

If there’s nothing there, then draw only on way, possible adding a note tag with “fixme” or “unwayed” (if it’s from Yahoo aerial), or both.

If you have clear gpx uploads of both sides of the way, then draw both sides with oneway=yes.

I don’t like using “P” in Potlatch, as the new way is not connected to any other intersecting way,
and that would ruin any routing capabilities.
But if you are aware of this issue, and go over the newly created way, and fix all the intersection (with the old and the new ways) then it should be ok.

Depends how much you know.
If you only know it’s “there somewhere” then create a node.
Otherwise, create a closed way.

The Map Features page in the wiki is a good starting point.

and a note about Tel Aviv parks:
Usually, I draw a closed way with leisure=garden and (sometimes) add a leisure=playground node where the small playground is.
Some parks are mainly playgrounds, so I draw the closed way as leisure=playground
Park HaYarkon and Ganei Yehoshua should be drawn as leisure=park

AFAIK, there are no leisure=common in Israel (Maybe in Modiin?)

Parking node/way are similar, with amenity=parking tags.
The ways to/from parking are highway=service
and parking aisles should be marked with both highway=service and service=parking_aisle
More at the Tag:amenity=parking page

As a general rule, when you want to map some feature, try looking for similar features already mapped,
and look at the tags of the node/way/relation.

Hi udif,

I see it as very important to map streets as detailed as possible.
This is later helping in the navigation with this data. Im also adding parking aisles as that are also streets to drive on.
Please see Poleg: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=32.27662&lon=34.86201&zoom=17&layers=B000FTF

Specially the traffic island are making a lot of work, but later this is the main difference between googlemaps and openstreetmaps in Israel:
The detail level of streets!

Im also adding parks, green areas and parking lots to the map.
Its always good to have places of orientation. This can help other mappers to find the correct location of the restaurant or coffee shop, too.
Good example: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=32.81428&lon=34.98825&zoom=16&layers=B000FTF
After I mapped the park of bap. Somebody else added the footway and Haifa looks a little bit more like Haifa :slight_smile:

Wow, this area looks great!
How did you map the buildings? By walking around them, perhaps?

As someone who works in this exact area, I can attest that this is not only pretty, but accurate.