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Mapping Destination signs on US Motorways #169
Description
Task Objective
To add destination=* and destination:ref=* tags on motorway_link ways representing the guidance signboard using Checkautopista2.
Background
destination=* tag is used to represent the city/town/neighborhood/road that you can reach by switching to the concerned highway. destination:ref=* tag is used to signifies the motorway number (ref tag of motorway) that is used to reach the destination. These tags are added on ways and not nodes and thus considered more relevant for navigation purpose when compared to exit_to tag used on motorway_junction node
Currently in the US, there are 25446 ways with destination=* tag and 13030 ways with destination:ref=* tag (as on 30 March 2016). All exit numbers junctions lead to at least 1 destination with 52,000 exit numbers in the US. This accounts minimum of about 25,000 missing destination=* and 39,000 missing destination:ref=* tag in the US.
- Map of currently mapped destination tags(red lines)
- Map of currently mapped destination:ref tags (blue lines)
Focus area
The 9 States used in exit number mapping are taken as focus area based on mapillary coverage, as it is the primary source.
- California
- Florida
- New Jersey
- Maryland + DC
- Pennsylvania
- Washington State
- Colorado
- Texas
- Illinois
Mapping Workflow
Other tags
Other than destination, exit_to tag is prominently used to represent guidance signboards(see taginfo). For now, we will be only adding missing destination and destination:ref tag to motorways that don't have related exit_to tag, as adding both destination and exit_to to the same way will be redundant work and could be solved with an automated approach later.
Changeset comment and source
Comment-> Adding missing destination tags https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/169
Source-> Bing;Mapillary;Wikipedia
Team
@mapbox/team-data
Progress
- Daily Stats
The current estimate is ~4 weeks for 9 states.
Resources
- Mapillary coverage layer - click this link to load in JOSM
tms:http://d2munx5tg0hw47.cloudfront.net/tiles/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png - Mapillary Photos
- State Department of Transportation(DoT) exit number documents.
- Wikipedia
- Cross Country roads
- Aaroads
Activity
jinalfoflia commentedon Apr 14, 2016
I came across this motorway where the user mdroads has added
destination:street=*tags instead ofdestination=*tag. There are 1589 ways in OpenStreetMap that are tagged using this tag. There is no information about this tag in the wiki.cc @planemad @pratikyadav
rickmastfan67 commentedon Apr 15, 2016
Maybe inviting mdroads here to comment on that tag would be the best thing to do. Especially if he has added the tag the most.
jinalfoflia commentedon Apr 15, 2016
@rickmastfan67 I have sent a message to mdroads asking for the same.
jinalfoflia commentedon Apr 18, 2016
Received a reply from mdroads:
The context for use of destination:street=* is to capture the street name when shown on overhead signage, destination:ref=* for the number, and destination=* only for city or place.
destination:street=* is only used when the street name actually appears on the motorway signs.
The tag is a proposal on the Exit Info wiki page, alongside destination:ref=* and some others.
This page is not well linked to the regular destination=* entry on the wiki (and should probably be merged with it), but does show North American signage tagging examples. The mostly European signage shown on the proposed Destination Details page on the other hand, rarely if ever use street names or cardinal directions.
/cc @planemad @pratikyadav @rickmastfan67
jothirnadh commentedon Apr 21, 2016
We are adding
destination:street=*,destination:ref=*anddestination=*as per the availability of Mapilary and wikipedia coverage. The mapilary coverage is limited to specific highways and in such cases we are completely relying on the Wikipedia information.It seems that the Wiki information for some highways is not correct, especially in case of highways in Texas. I was working on I-35 in Texas where there is no Mapilary coverage but a proper Wiki page with all the information related to exit numbers and destination. Here the exit numbers and the destination information were wrongly assigned which I didn't realize at the beginning and mapped the whole stretch.
An OpenStreetMap contributor got back to me pointing out the mistake by commenting on my changeset. This is a serious issue and we need to find an alternative source to map destination tags. We also need to validate the one's we mapped since last week.
cc:/ @pratikyadav @planemad @maning @lxbarth
mikelmaron commentedon Apr 22, 2016
@jothirnadh I read the changeset comment differently. Wikipedia might be correct but you were applying the exits in Iowa, not in Texas. If so, that would explain the issue, and we should pay closer attention to where we're mapping.
jothirnadh commentedon Apr 26, 2016
@mikelmaron you are right. This mainly happened because, checkautopista downloads all the highways in its bounding box, not limiting it to a state. I was not aware of this and started to add destination tags to all the I 35 highways it downloaded. Will keep track of things from now.
pratikyadav commentedon May 4, 2016
Project Summary
In the course of 12 days, the team added 3417
destination,destination:refanddestination:streettags in 9 US states using Mapillary images, state DOT documents, Wikipedia, Cross Country roads and Inter-state guides.Observation-
exit_toanddestinationtagging scheme.Project Statistics-
destinationtag added: 1663 (link to geojson)destination:reftag added: 1481 (link to geojson)destination:streettag added: 273 (link to geojson)Closing here.
🚀
rickmastfan67 commentedon May 4, 2016
I hope you guys paid attention to signs that had the "TO" text in them beside the highway shields and properly tagged them as "destination:ref:to". Case in point: http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/38919762
pratikyadav commentedon May 5, 2016
@rickmastfan67 Thanks you for pointing this out. We fixed this particular one and will make sure to keep an eye on these cases during our peer review session. Feel free to post any such case on these peer-review tickets.
krishnanammala commentedon May 5, 2016
OSM Diary --> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/nammala/diary/38560
dgearhart commentedon May 10, 2016
I found an issue when a way is both an off ramp and an on ramp. The way will need to be split between an off ramp and an on ramp or it will produce invalid driving directions.
I documented the issue and how to fix on the Exit Info wiki so others can benefit from our discussion: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Exit_Info#Off_Ramp.2FOn_Ramp_Way_Split
dgearhart commentedon May 11, 2016
I made a comment on this changeset: http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/38979964
I fixed the issues.
I would suggest doing before and after testing of routes to confirm the tagging is appropriate
pratikyadav commentedon May 12, 2016
@dgearhart Thank you for bringing this up. Currently, we are working on a tool that can help scale-up the validation work for this and other projects, where we used mapillary as a source to add tags on OSM.