I’ve managed to draw my first street in JOSM (from own GPS track data), but was a bit scary about uploading it (warnings to be careful all about). In the end I decided to draw the street, but not the very last meters that connect it to previously existing streets. This way I did not modify any existing objects with my first upload which seemed safer to me.
Hoever the street probably should be connected to other streets to be of any value (possibly I could move the end points right in potlatch?). Would anyone take a look at my street to check that it is ok before I try to do so? If so, what do you need to know, just the location/description, or coordinates of the end points, some kind of object id or so?
The street looks fine to me - just need to join it at the ends. When I run a validation check on the area (in JOSM) then it reports that the new street doesn’t have a name and another road nearby doesn’t have a name either. If you know the name(s) then add it, but it isn’t essential.
If you are already using JOSM I’d stick to that. Download the area and containing the new street, and then drag the end of the new street onto the existing road. If the existing road already has a node at the join point then press ctrl at the same time to merge the nodes. Once you’ve done it upload the data.
Thank you Mark. I think it worked quite well. Unfortunately I’m not sure about the street names as most streets don’t seem to be signposted in that area.
Another question arose when proceeding with the next tracks: Opposite to unclassified roads, I was prompted to enter a reference when tagging a road as tertiary. What is it, the source of the data used to create the road? A quick search in the forum did not shed any light yet.
For street names the only sources you can usually use are signposts or local knowledge. Copying from an existing map isn’t allowed (as existing maps are copyright). If you don’t know the name I’d just not add it and hope in the future somebody else will be able to add it.
As to reference I’ve not see it before. There might be something in the wiki but I always find the wiki hardwork to follow.
There is a key called “ref” which stores the road number and this might be what it is referring to. For example in the UK it might contain “A1” or “B3180”. (see the wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:ref) However, tertiary roads are quite low in the priority order of roads and often don’t have a reference (at least here in the UK). It might be that the program is just asking in case you want to fill it in.
The source of the road usually goes under the source key (for example “source:gps trace”).
The opposite of unclassified is classified. In the UK though there are a lot of unclassified roads that don’t have references - many country lanes for example (though some people tag the larger lanes as tertiary). If you don’t know whether a road is classified (motorway/trunk/primary/secondary or tertiary, and perhaps include residential) or unclassified, tag it as highway=road which lets other people it needs reviewing later. Especially useful when tracing from Yahoo imagery where the classification is rarely obvious.
My approach was to map a road as tertiary when it matches the description of a U.K. tertiary road as described in the wiki (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features) instead of following the official classification of the respective country (here: Spain), as I didn’t know the Spanish system.
If that is wrong, I should probably either follow the Spanish description on http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ES:Map_Features when dealing with Spanish roads or when I am unable to detect if the Spanish description applies simply use highway=road as you suggested.
Not that easy to get things right at the very very beginning…