When editing OSM, I have always been under the impression that what matters most is the Ground Truth ie. what signage and usage there is in real life.
Recently I saw that the part of the A12 which used to be the A102(M) has been tagged as a motorway, despite all signage and usage pointing to it as an A-road. This is due to the legislation making this stretch of road a motorway never having been revoked.
The same user who made the changeset also changed the south path of the old Severn Bridge from a cycleway to a footway on similar grounds.
In my mind, this kind of editing is unhelpful, as map users would care how things are in real life, rather than what they technically are according to legislation.
What is the view of the community? Should Official Truth be prioritised over Ground Truth? Is there some compromise where we split Official Truth and Ground Truth tags when they differ?
We map ground truth. Unfortunately UK motorways seem to attract a particular breed of “well actually” mappers.
If it’s signed as an A road, map it as an A road. If you really want to record the fact that the Statutory Instruments say one thing or another, use the designation= tag.
Absolutely correct to revert these changes, it’s ridiculous to tag maxspeeds not based on signage but what it “should” be because some legislation was never updated. The same applies to classifying A-roads as motorways and cycle paths as footways.
There’s plenty of outdated and unenforced legislation in the UK, should we tag London pavements with plank_of_wood=delivery? Probably not…
The Mancunian Way speed limits need attending to too. If someone wants to argue the signed limits aren’t legitimate they should start a judicial review not drag us into it.
I’ve reverted all the changes to the Mancunian Way, and I’ve checked that everything in London + the Severn Bridge has also been reverted correctly. CS: Changeset: 180221456 | OpenStreetMap