Continuing from the previous diary post.

We have successfully re-tagged all quadrant routes (4-digit route numbers) in Pennsylvania with the pattern ref=SR **** to ref:penndot=SR ****

A total of 134 remaining ways yet to be retagged for various reasons: * 9 ways have ref=SR **** along with values like ref=T*** , ref=PA ***, ref=Historic PA **** * 53 ways have ref=PA ****

As these are edge cases, we hope that the local mappers from Pennsylvania can look into each route and decide how it should be retagged if required. If you have any feedback on the previous retagging or want to propose a mass retagging, feel free to drop a comment on the mapping task tracker that our team can look into.

Special thanks to rickmastfan67 who provided his valuable inputs during the retagging.

Continuing from the previous diary post.

Last week, the quadrant routes (routes having 4-digit route numbers prefixed with SR) in Pennsylvania were re-tagged by replacing the ref key with the ref:penndot key.

Outcome

Total routes re-tagged: 6787

Breakdown of re-tagged routes

• ref=Sr **** -> ref:penndot=SR ****: 35
• ref=SR **** -> ref:penndot=SR ****: 3151
  • This was a mass-edit and have been uploaded in one go
  • After the edit was done it was noticed that in 29 of these routes SR **** was followed by a non-state route number like T*** , PA ***, Historic PA ***
• ref=SR**** -> ref:penndot=SR****: 3592
  • This edit was done in 7 parts, each changesest containing the following number of routes:
    • 32: In this case, ref=SR**** was changed to ref:penndot=SR **** using the TODO list plugin in JOSM. Since changing the rest 3560 routes in a similar way would have taken a very long time, from the next step only ref was changed to ref:penndot by mass modification and SR**** was left as is
    • 474
    • 179
    • 325
    • 592
    • 1422
    • 568
  • Also this time it was ensured that none of the routes of the order of SR followed by a non-state route number were edited
• ref:penndot=Sr -> ref:penndot=SR: 9

Note

• Of these 6787 re-tagged routes, 1031 routes were found with the penndot_ref tag alongside the ref tag. Following the OSM Wiki guidelines, the penndot_ref tags were deleted for these routes.
• @rickmastfan67 pointed out that 4 nodes with exit numbers were wrongly re-tagged to ref:penndot in this process. This change was reverted back here

Next Action

• 37 routes were found where SR**** is followed by a non-state route number like T*** , PA ***, Historic PA ***
• 79 routes were found where a non-state route number like T*** , PA ***, Historic PA *** is followed by SR ****

For the above 116 routes, the ref tags were not changed to ref:penndot as we’re unsure of the correct tagging convention for these cases. We would appreciate any input on what would be the correct way to tag them and if the 29 similar routes that were unintentionally re-tagged to ref:penndot in the second step need to be reverted back.

Quadrant routes in Pennsylvania have 4-digit route numbers prefixed with SR. OSM recommends that these route numbers be tagged with the ref:penndot key rather than the ref key in the following manner: ref:penndot=SR 6000.

• Total incorrectly tagged ways in Pennsylvania: 6819. Of these:
  • Routes tagged as ref=SR **** or ref=SR****: 6775
  • Routes tagged as ref=Sr **** or ref=Sr****: 44

• Incorrectly tagged ways in Pennsylvania excluding routes with no space: 3132. Of these:
  • Routes tagged as ref=SR ****: 3123
  • Routes tagged as ref=Sr ****: 9

I’m looking into re-tagging these incorrectly tagged ways into ref:penndot=SR **** to prevent any problems with mappers and data users getting confused by the mention of a reference highway that isn’t normally meant for the public being in the ref tag.

The work-flow I’ll be following is listed below:

• Load overpass turbo link and run the query
• Export the results into JOSM
• In JOSM, find objects with the filter ref:sr
• Rename key for selected objects from ref to ref:penndot
• The changeset comment i’ll be using is Changing key of quadrant routes in PA which are not signposted from ref to ref:penndot as per OSM Wiki guidelines https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/149

For further details on the progress please refer to this repository.

An Introduction to my hometown, Chandannagar

Chandannagar is a quiet and beautiful town situated by the banks of the Hooghly River 35kms north of Kolkata. Established as a French colony in 1673, the city became a permanent French settlement in 1688, and more than two thousand brick houses were erected in the town around 1730 and a considerable maritime trade was carried on. For a time, it was the main center for European commerce in Bengal. Inspite of India becoming independent of Britain on 15 August 1947, Chandannagar was ceded to India by the French only on 2 February 1951. Owing to its glorious past, the town is decked with various places of tourist interest and many elegant residences along the riverbank.

Chandannagar Strand Picture taken by Pratyush Sengupta

French Museum Picture taken by Rangan Datta

Mapping Chandannagar on OpenStreetMap

Being born and brought up in Chandannagar, certainly it was the first place I wanted to map! Here is how it looked in OSM before:

Other than a handful of important roads, it was almost empty. I began by adding details within my neighborhood and went on to mapping all tourist attractions, missing roads and streets, schools, universities, post-office, police station, shops, restaurants, bus-stops, hospitals, nursing homes, religious places and other local amenities. The OpenStreetMap Map-Features Wiki and the presets came in handy for the purpose of correctly tagging the features that were added to the map.

Once done, this is how Chandannagar appeared on OSM:

Designing and Building a Multilingual Interactive Guide Map of Chandannagar

After adding most of the details to Chandannagar on OpenStreetMap, I wanted to make something useful for people visiting the place for the first time (like a tourist guide map). For this purpose of designing and building a Multilingual Interactive Guide Map of Chandannagar, this guide from the Mapbox toolkit proved to be very helpful. Also, Bengali translations have been added for all the POIs displayed in the application. Below is a screenshot of the web application:

Going Forward

In the future, I plan on going for a field survey trip with my friends while I’m at my hometown so as to create the most detailed map of my hometown on OpenStreetMap, also introducing my friends to OSM in the process.