OpenStreetMap
I was rightly picked up on an errant Post Box reference recently, the post Box outside Bayswater Tube central London. I Cycle past it near every day, I am usually late so have little time to re check my post boxes, so today I did.
Anyway... that is not the point. Looking at the area in JOSM we have examples of recreational parks glued to streets, masking the roads - see Prince's Square just west of Bayswater ( I have not corrected it so it can serve as an example. )
To the West side of this square in the map data we have two roads overlayed over one another with different names.
Again, this is not a big deal and i have not corrected so that it can servce as an example. A street usually does not have two names ( unless there is a former and new name ).
I am not at ease with things glued to other things ( ie streets glued to parks, or rivers glued to boundaries etc ), it doesn't make sense, not in a CAD world or real world for that matter, and i usually unglue them in JOSM . A Boundary would run down the middle of a street, a park neither in a real world or any other is glued to or overlaps a street, they are distinct objects, and thus should be represented as such, especially in an electronic map / representation which has in theory an infinite degree of resolution and detail.
Hopefully i am not being a desperate pedant here, I would be glad if someone could put me straight before I run amok and start 'correcting' things in my style rather than accepted OSM style
cheers bri
Discussion
Comment from Andy Allan on 18 November 2009 at 08:48
Go for it, I've always believed that the park boundary is at position A, and the middle of the road is over there a few metres away. It's especially true in London where the parks have walls around them - things get a bit more fuzzy when the "park" hasn't got a physical edge to it.
I cleared a few doubled-up roads just north of there when I added the addressing up NW of Paddington, I'm not sure what the history is around there but looks like someone made a mistake a few years ago. They had Queensway appearing all over the place.
Comment from IgnoredAmbience on 18 November 2009 at 09:47
I personally preferred the glued style, but in these days of ultra-micro-mapping, there's little point now.
Comment from Mappo on 18 November 2009 at 10:26
You mention rivers glued to boundaries. Do you mean local council authorities and the like? I thought relations would be used for such cases:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relation:boundary
So if the boundary followed a river, then a road you would add both to the relation. (In practice I'd guess that rivers are split between regions, but maybe roads belong to one side or the other. Either way I'd probably, for pragmatic reasons i.e. laziness, still use a relation on the road rather than create a new way for the purpose)
If you mean a park or forest that ends at a river, then I'm not so sure. I'd probably glue them together in that case, but maybe not in a city where there may be a chance of someone micro-mapping the pavement, bus stops, benches, postboxes etc.
Comment from andrewpmk on 18 November 2009 at 15:40
I will normally unglue parks and landuse (because the edge of the park is NOT the centerline of the road, because the width of the road is positive), but I usually glue boundaries to the middle of roads/rivers if they follow them precisely.