I’m wondering what the best way to deal with a old named road that doesn’t seems to exist anymore is. I thought I should check before just deleting the old way. Looking at LINZ imagery this road doesn’t seems to exist anymore. Also looking into historical google maps data this road hasn’t existed since 2011.
This road is part of the LINZ road addressing dataset, so I’m just worried if I get rid of it. It will just be added back from an import.
The road in question is Russel Road, Next to the Eyrewell Forest. -43.416149,172.353097
LINZ road id: 1787018
If also anyone knows the proper way to report the invalid data to LINZ let me know
If the feature no longer exists in reality, i.e. no traces of asphalt left on the ground, it could potentially be considered razed:highway=*
Lifecycle tags: Lifecycle prefix - OpenStreetMap Wiki
By marking the existing way with a lifecycle tag, depending on the complexity of the import program used for LINZ imports, it may acknowledge that the feature already exists in the OSM database and skip instead of re-adding it.
Had a gander with the LINZ imagery layer and can confirm that it’s been razed, probably best to split the way at [[node:8232786200]] and mark both [[way:215133980]] and [[way:215133977]] as razed:highway=track.
Hey Ben, welcome to the forum and thanks for the query!
Any import of the LINZ Roads (Addressing) dataset requires careful human consideration of each feature, as the source data specifically states it does not necessarily represent a formed road:
These road centrelines do not represent actual road formation, nor do they represent legal access. They must not be considered as topographic, cadastral, or legal.
Tools like Missing Streets do make use of the dataset to offer edit suggestions, but the instructions are clear to use with caution: that the dataset includes “paper roads” which should not be added.
So, certainly using a lifecycle tag is a good way to prevent a ‘re-draw’, especially when a feature is still visible in some aerial imagery (a typical example being demolished buildings), and it can’t hurt to do so. However in this case I don’t think that it’s a concern that the road is present in that LINZ data.
I had a look in the immediate surrounds and noticed that to the east there’s actually plenty of those LINZ data paper roads crossing fields, it does make me curious about how they’ve come about
