And I'm not sure I buy your argument about the state/US routes. North appears to have the same number of lanes and roughly the same frequency of signals as lots of other roads in the area that it looks like you've downgraded from primary to secondary in the past, like Ashland, Western, or Roosevelt. Is there any material difference between those roads and North Ave besides the state route designation?

Ok, I'm not sure I agree, but probably at least Ida B. Wells and Columbus should be primary then? They come directly off the freeways.

Hi, just wanted to comment that I'm visiting Chicago, and as a former resident, I was pretty surprised that Michigan wasn't highway=primary. I've seen that you've led some discussion on the wiki and whatnot, and that there's not necessarily consensus. But I will say that Michigan and Ida Wells definitely "feel" like primary roads to me, based on how similar roads are tagged in other places. Moreover, just going by what's a state/US route feels a bit arbitrary to me, and I don't think it leads to a particularly useful map IMO. The Chicago classification looks a little too "flattened" to me, there's definitely more of a natural hierarchy to the road network than is implied by everything in the central area except North Ave. being a secondary.

Just my two cents, but let me know what you think.

Will

Hi,
Do you have a source for changing this bike path name to match the train line? I've only ever seen it signed/referred to as the "Expo Bike Path", even with the new train line letters being in place for a few months now. This is probably because the bike path still mostly parallels Exposition Blvd., even if the train is not the Expo line anymore. I think this should remain matching existing signage (or maybe expanding the abbreviation to "Exposition Bike Path") unless you have evidence it's been officially changed somewhere.

Best,
Will

Hey,
Thanks. I'm still not sure if Reedley or the NPs are significant enough to warrant a trunk connections, since no other towns of 25k population or National Parks in CA are classified as such. If they are, it seems like the trunk classification should extend all the way to the destination, not just dead end where the construction quality decreases, as the goal is to move away from an entirely road construction-based classification. But on the other hand, given that the freeway is a stub anyway, it's not the most egregious outlier in terms of network connectivity anyway, and I am inclined to defer to your local judgment. So if you'd really rather it stay trunk, we can document that as a case for the urban gray area on the wiki.

Best,
Will

Hi, thanks for being open to discussion, and sorry for the delay in replying. I suppose my question would be, who is taking this road in order for it to be considered a trunk route, that is, one of the main routes in the state's road network? What destinations does it serve that merit this importance? If it connects some of the suburbs to central area, I think that's sufficient, but it looks like it just heads into farmland, near towns like Sanger, and eventually the mountains, which seems more like a highway=primary to me. But I assume you're local (given your username ;)), so you might have some insight into local use patterns that I do not. What the guidelines mostly try to steer away from is just tagging a road as highway=trunk because it has a high speed limit or "expressway" features, instead focusing more on its importance to the network.

Also, one of the principles of the classification scheme is to emphasize connectivity and minimize "spurs" where roads of a certain class don't connect at each end with a road of equal or higher class. This isn't always right, since sometimes roads do decrease in importance gradually as you leave an urban area, and I could see CA 180 being one of those exceptions to some extent. It just seems more likely to me (again, from afar) that this cutoff is somewhat west of Reed Ave., since it looks like it is surrounded by farmland, not residents, from the point the freeway ends. Maybe Academy is more reasonable, though I'm still a bit skeptical it has to be trunk at all.

Let me know what you think!

Best,
Will

Hi, welcome to OpenStreetMap! It looks like you're quite eager to add trees to this park, which is great. However, it seems like you are attaching the trees directly to the highway=footway line, which makes it look like the trees are obstructing the path! It also looks like the tree nodes you're creating don't always correspond to actual trees, though I might be using a different satellite imagery layer than you. Can you clarify your intentions here? Did you mean for these all to be individual trees? Or were they just supposed to represent that the paths were "tree-lined" maybe?

In general, you want to make sure that each node corresponds to a real feature, and that objects only connect when they are connected in reality (like road intersections, or two buildings which touch each other).

Thanks!
Will

Also edited to conform to new terminal at Del Amo Station rather than DT LB

Hi, thanks for going through and adding crosswalks in LA. I was wondering though, what led you to decide to map this crossing across Main St? way/1213079479. I've seen you add this and other "unmarked" crossings across high-speed, multi-lane roads in recent changesets, and I'm worried mapping them as crossings does more harm than good. I'm a pretty confident pedestrian, but I certainly wouldn't feel safe crossing a major road with no crosswalk like here, and I worry that mapping it as a crossing is misleading. When I map crossings, I usually only map "unmarked" crossings across minor roads. You can see what I mean here: osm.org/#map=18/34.04125/-118.43534.

Let me know what you think.

Best,
Will

Hi Eugen,
Thanks for the note. That's interesting that some app processes hiking=yes on ways, if you figure out which it is and how it's used, I'd be interested to know. If the tag is useful information, there's no reason it can't be documented.

Regarding the trail I left a fixme on, thanks for sending that map. I'm quite familiar with this park, I in fact hiked the Rising Sun trail two weeks ago. So I know from on-location survey that there is a path branching off there, even if it does not appear on the map you sent. Even if they're unofficial, I find mapping these paths useful so that hikers aren't caught by surprise when there's a junction on their trail. Hopefully no one is deleting paths just because they don't appear on official maps! (Not saying you are of course ;), some of the other paths you've recently deleted look truly overgrown, or maybe were just bad tiger imports in the first place)

Best,
Will

This particular changeset lists Bing as a source. And from the edit pattern, it doesn't look like an import to me: they've added stop signs, parking=surface tags on existing lots, crosswalks, and marked torn down buildings. What makes you think it is an import, and from where could it possibly have been from? It looks to me much more like a newbie mapper who didn't know they were supposed to save changesets periodically before moving to another area.

Perusing other changesets by this mapper, they look like they've added a number of other buildings that appear to exist from aerial imagery, but based on one somewhat rude interaction resulting from slightly out of date imagery in changeset/140611357, you've reverted all of their edits? Is there more to this? Otherwise this revert does not seem justified. Happy to discuss this in an alternate forum if that's better.

For instance, this revert has deleted existing crosswalks (way/1198901851), removed new buildings (way/1198917796), and restored demolished ones (way/427818140), problems which, frankly given the number of local mappers, may never be fixed.

If you don't mind me asking, why was this reverted? Other than being huge, from a quick perusal, the original changeset looks like it mostly made worthwhile changes, and I think this revert has significantly lowered the map quality in the areas it touched.
Best,
Will

Hi,
Thanks for clarifying, by source I guess you mean as a second check? Because otherwise using as a source sounds quite like copying.

In any case, in the future it might be better to refer to this source as Esri itself, maybe using this link directly to their map: https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html. Citing the website you sent makes it look like you were using data from a public domain database, which I found misleading.
Happy mapping,
Will

Hi,
I've noticed that in this and other recent changesets, you've been adding "hiking=yes" to a number of trails. Can you clarify what you mean by this tag? It isn't documented anywhere on the wiki far as I can tell, and more importantly, I'm not really sure what it's supposed to imply about, e.g. the service road you've added it to here. In fact, on some ways you removed established access tags like "foot=yes" in favor of it, which I reverted when I saw it.

Best,
Will

Hi,
Welcome to OSM! If you don't mind me asking, what were you trying to do here? Your edit appears to have removed names from a few roads, and even turned one of them into a power line. I'm going to go ahead and switch them back, but if you have any questions, feel free to reach out! This beginner's guide might also help: osm.wiki/Beginners%27_guide.

Happy mapping!
Will

Hi,
Out of curiosity, what "local mapping guidelines" are you referring to here that led you to tag this route as trunk? Are they documented anywhere?

For context, consensus has emerged across the US to tag trunk routes by their importance to the road network rather than by physical characteristics, see osm.wiki/United_States/2021_Highway_Classification_Guidance. As part of this, I and other mappers developed California state guidelines to adhere to this concept. You can read them here: osm.wiki/California/2022_Highway_Classification_Guidelines. In particular, we documented this particular route as being best-tagged as highway=primary + expressway=yes, to reflect the fact that it does not connect major population centers, but is still built to near-freeway standards that allow for high speeds.

Happy to discuss these guidelines and the thought process behind them, and whether any modifications to various documented practices are necessary.

Best,
Will

Hi Olga,
Thanks for replying. Unfortunately, this response raises even more questions from me regarding your methods. The North American Roads database you linked to appears to contain only major roads. They appear on my system as blue lines, and if I click them, data such as object IDs and speed limits appear. "Santa Monica Place" does not appear to be in the database. Instead, I see Santa Monica Place as a label in the underlying base map, which appears to be from Esri. I think copying from this map would be prohibited in OSM, since I think it is copyrighted.

Moreover, even if it were allowed, I see no evidence from this map that the pathways themselves are named. The label appears to be labeling a location, not a road. Note how the label isn't inside the roadway, like it is for nearby Broadway or the 3rd Street Promenade.

Is there any other indication that makes you believe this path through the shopping center is named? If the roads database really was your only source for this edit, I believe you've misinterpreted it and that this should be reverted.

Best,
Will

Hi,
Regarding the Leeward intersection, note that it's preferred to map two-way stops like this on a node off the main road. There's an example on the wiki: highway=stop#Tagging_minor_road_stops. Also, direction here refers to the road's defined "direction", so should be "forward" or "backward", not the cardinal direction. Hope this helps!

Best,
Will