Proposal:Road schema

Road schema
Proposal status:	Draft (under way)
Proposed by:	EzekielT
Tagging:	highway=* Data item
Applies to:	, ,
Definition:	Thoroughfare schema
Statistics:
Draft started:	2018-12-30

My map style (which is in beta) which incorporates this road design can be viewed here: Luminous map style.

Ideas

Here we go!

Main

The efficient schema for OSM highways proposed here:

highway=motorway: violet (#7F00FF)
highway=trunk: magenta (#FF00FF)
highway=primary: red (#FF0000)
highway=secondary: orange (#FF7F00)
highway=tertiary: yellow (#FFFF00)
highway=unclassified: green (#00FF00)
highway=residential: cyan (#C2FFFF)
highway=service: blue (#C7C7FF)
highway=living_street: purple (#DF87FD)
highway=pedestrian: cerise (#FF99E6)
highway=skyway: crimson (#FE8BA7)
highway=corridor: vermillion (#FEA485) 
highway=track: amber (#FFBF00)
highway=via_ferrata: lime (#DDFE7B)
highway=bus_guideway: harlequin (#BBFFA4)
highway=raceway: erin (#9CECB1)
highway=road: aquamarine (#00FFBF)
highway=escape: capri (#00BFFF)
highway=platform: cerulean (#8F9FD1)
highway=elevator: indigo (#4000FF)
highway=cycleway: rose (#FF57AB)
highway=bridleway: chartreuse (#80FF00)
highway=footway: spring green (#68FDB3)
highway=path: azure (#3F9EFD)

Colour coding

The current red to yellow schema would be expanded to cover the whole colour wheel, encompassing all primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary RGB colours; providing maximum differentiation between the road types, with the more minor roads being pale in tone, which will prevent the map from looking too crowded or overpowering. Gone will be the days where we can't tell whether a road is unclassified or residential, or whether it's a path or a footway :). No two road types would share the same colour anymore. Each road type would have their own, unique colour, different from all the rest. No more confusion would ensue.

Roads: Violet (motorway) -> Magenta (trunk) -> Red (primary) -> Orange (secondary) -> Yellow (tertiary) -> Green (unclassified) -> Cyan (residential) -> Blue (service)

Special: Purple (living street) -> Cerise (pedestrian) -> Crimson (skyway) -> Vermilion (corridor) -> Amber (track) -> Lime (via ferrata) -> Harlequin (bus guideway) -> Erin (raceway) -> Aquamarine (road) -> Capri (escape road) -> Cerulean (platform) -> Indigo (elevator)

Paths: Rose (cycleway) -> Chartreuse (bridleway) -> Spring green (footway) -> Azure (path)

Display

Both cycleways, bridleways, footways, tracks, paths and their links would be displayed as clean-lined, more modern filled lines, just like other road types (such as trunk roads and secondary roads), instead of the current dotted design, as a filled line design looking better and more modern than the current dotted line design, see other reasons at section 2, Rationale. All these trails would be shown thicker, thus easier to see.

Refs

• Display unclassified refs as rectangles
• Display residential refs as rectangles
• Display icn, ncn, rcn, and lcn refs in rectangles

Tracktypes

tracktype=grade0 would be added. The tracktypes would determine how thick the filled lines of cycleways, footpaths, paths, and tracks (and their respective links) are.

Key	Value	Element	Comment	Photo
tracktype	grade0		Solid. At or near freeway grade. See  Sealed road.
tracktype	grade1		Solid. Usually a paved or sealed surface. See  Sealed road.
tracktype	grade2		Solid. Usually an unpaved track with surface of gravel. See  Gravel road.
tracktype	grade3		Mostly solid. Even mixture of hard and soft materials. Almost always an unpaved track.
tracktype	grade4		Mostly soft. Almost always an unpaved track prominently with soil/sand/grass, but with some hard or compacted materials mixed in.
tracktype	grade5		Soft. Almost always an unpaved track lacking additional materials, same surface as surrounding terrain.
tracktype	<no value>		If no tracktype tag is present, the track is rendered with a dot-dash line style (as shown right).	Photo not applicable

Links

New link tags:

• highway=cycleway_link
• highway=path_link*
• highway=unclassified_link
• highway=track_link
• highway=bridleway_link
• highway=service_link
• highway=residential_link
• highway=living_street_link

Skyways

The tag highway=skyway would be added, indicating a skyway, either individual or within a skyway network, including non-bridge portions.

Rationale

OSM currently renders residential roads, service roads, unclassified roads, and tertiary roads all in white colour. Kocio, Adamant1, Dieterdreist, Imagico, etc. all have expressed disagreement with this. I also think that we can at least be more creative and try at least a bit harder to distinguish the four of them from each other. Furthermore, the current dotted line design used for cycleways and trails is pretty hard to look at from further distances, on both the zoom layers and on the screen. It makes them look like a spaghetti of ants, especially at zoom levels 14-16. Changing the current dotted line design to cleaner, filled lines similar to how other roads are displayed (but thinner in most cases, depending on tracktype=*) is an objective of this proposal, and would be better in my opinion. Not to mention that we currently have no rendering for cycleway and trail links.

There was also a lot of controversy caused by rendering paths and footways the same (not to mention tonnes of confusion, as if there wasn't enough already), see GitHub.

Adding skyways as a tag will resolve confusion of how to map them.

Turnpikes

Another possibility is exclusively rendering motorways with toll=yes violet and rearrange the colour scheme accordingly. Rendering toll roads differently than freeways is common in many maps (especially map books), create differentiation, and would help make expanding the colour schema across the colour wheel possible.

See also

Cycle Hierarchy, a technically abandoned or stalled proposal from over 5 years ago. This new proposal of road schema derives a certain aspect of that aforementioned proposal (cycleways being rendered as filled lines rather than dotted lines).