Highway Mapping

Actually there isn’t a clear structure how to map the highways.

I found the following sources:

  1. a lot of information from the governmet : www.dor.gov.np
    All National Highways and Feeder roads
    also surface information : black-topped, gravel, eathern

  2. Wikpedia list : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_roads_in_Nepal
    H01 to H15 , F01 to F51

  3. OSM-Wiki : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nepal/Roads
    classification : National Highways, … . urban roads
    no information, how the OSM classifications : trunk, primary, secondary, tertiary should be handled.

Mapping status :
H01 (H01.3???), H10, H04, H05 as trunks
H02, H06 as primaries

Some Feeder roads : mapped as primary or secondary or tertary or unclassified!!!

My proposal :

  1. all officially defined national highways (H01, … ) will be mapped as trunks

  2. the ref-tag of national highways should be H01, H02, …. and not N01 or NH01…

  3. all national highways get a relation and are listed in a new wiki-page
    (see as an example Rajasthan /India : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/India:Roads/Rajasthan )

  4. Feeder roads ( as defined in source 1) : all primary and with relations
    Using the relations it would be easy ( at least with JOSM) to make corrections for a complete road ( changing from primary to secondary,…)

  5. If a distinction of Feeder roads as primaries or secondaries is necessary, it should be discussed here.

  6. We don’t use the traffic volume for classifying roads. Where should these informations come from. To describe the roads more precise, we have enough tags like : lanes, surface, width …

What do you think about this?

Heinz_V

I agree with your proposal. The problem with tagging highways in Nepal is the information related to lanes and speed. I think this proposal should be discussed within the community and we can find a solution. :slight_smile:

Yes, the traffic speed informations are a problem.
Are there maxspeed definitions in Nepal?
We could use the „practical maxspeed“ tag.
See : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Practical_maxspeed

This proposed new tag is not approved but quite often used.

Till there is a decision, how to classify the roads (trunks,…, teritary), it would be usefull to add to all already mapped roads the ref-tag (H01,H02,…,F01,F02…).

I think there are maxspeed definition for the roads in Nepal. But we need to make sure of it. I think your suggestion of ref-tag make sense. Will start tagging the roads :slight_smile:

I have added the table of all national highways to the wiki- Road page.
In the last column you find how the roads are actually mapped(trunk,…,unclassified). This should be controlled and corrections are neccessary.
Three highways are uncomplete.
Specially the H09 may be false. The officail definition is unclear. (to Diktel or Salleri or Lamindanda?).

Thank you for the remarks in the wiki page. Will look into it and make necessary corrections. :slight_smile:

To find a good solution for the classification of the national highways, I make the following proposal :

trunks : H01,H02,H03,H04,H05,H06,H07,H10,H12,H16
primaries : H08,H09,H11,H13
secondaries : H14,H15,H17,H18
The road conditions should be defined with the tags : lanes, surface and maxspeed:practical.

In the wiki (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nepal/Roads) under remarks you find, how the roads are actually mapped.

Any votes against?
I like this proposal.

Topic raised on hot mailing list : https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/2015-April/008173.html

All roads with the same rank or higher should be connected.
It is very strange when secondary road do not connected to another secondary or primary road.
The rank of the road is a measure of its significance so significant road could not be isolated and should be connected to another significant roads with the same or higher rank.

So the proposal http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=493893#p493893 is better than http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/2015-April/008173.html

Here my tool for roads:
http://wowik.000space.com/routes/np/
Today I have partially translated it to English and append some lists of Nepal roads from http://www.dor.gov.np/national_highways.php and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_roads_in_Nepal

  1. It allows control the connectivity of road with given rank.
    For example here we can see many short pieces of isolated clusters of secondary roads (typical beginners errors)
    http://wowik.000space.com/routes/np/clusters.htm#level3

  2. It shows Lists or the roads and how OSM objects correspond to it.
    We can see road relations and ways, еhe total length or roads and comparison with reference list.

Here we can see that not all ref=H04 ways are included in the relation and total length of the ways in OSM is less than length in the list
http://wowik.000space.com/routes/np/1.htm#H04

It would be cool to render such street ended in nothing (or not connected) on the map!
Only the end points of such streets drawn big in red or something like this.

As a new member I don’t know about this forum. Now I’ve escalated to the concern. I’m going to change those roads into ‘territory’ category. Thanks for your educational comments.