Talk:Canada/Tagging guidelines
Discuss Canadian tagging guidelines:
Proposed new guidelines
Suggested by Dshpak based on conversations with srw, jrreid, and Burgundavia on #osm.
- Overview
- Motorway: Controlled access highways (all of them).
- Trunk: National Highway System core highways. See:
- Primary, secondary, tertiary: Provincial highways. Exact usage varies from province to province.
All highways get a ref tag giving their highway number. Highways can also have a surface tag, with values paved and unpaved.
- Unclassified: Rural roads that are not provincial or national highways.
- Secondary, tertiary: Major urban roads that are not part of the highway system
- Residential: Residential roads
- Unclassified: All other named urban roads
- Service: Back lanes, alleys.
- Track: Small roads in parks, dirt trails in fields, etc. Speed limits are probably 30 km/h or less; roads may be maintained privately.
All urban streets get a name tag. This includes numbered streets (name=11th Street North).
- Why
- Motorway is defined as restricted access by OSM. That's what it's for.
- Likewise residential -- this one's obvious.
- I feel that the national highway system deserves special treatment, as the core cross-Canada road network.
- Within each province, there is a definite need for at least two classes of provincial highway. These cannot be defined at a national level, since highway systems vary from province to province.
- Two classes are also needed for major urban roads, as each city tends to have major arteries that stand apart from the other major roads.
- The two different definitions of secondary and tertiary (provincial highway vs. major urban road) can be distinguished by the presence of a ref tag.
User:Dshpak - 05:17, 4 June 2007
Speed Limits
Can we classify streets based on their speed limits? 80km/h = secondary, 50km/h = tertiary, etc.. User:Bcrosby - 16:34, 28 February 2008
Dual numbers
How should highways with multiple numbers be tagged? An example: Quebec hwy 40/73 near Quebec City. Autoroute Laurentienne (hwy 73 north of Quebec City) is also classified as number 175, where it is still a motorway, but 175 (and any other number in the 100 range) is normally not used for highways.
-- User:Fsteggink - 02:42, 14 May 2008
Highway concurrencies should be tagged with the ref tag using the semi-colon value separator between values. Himké (talk)
Can someone translate into rural terms?
I'm a first-time contributor doing some tracing in Renfrew County. Can anyone tell me which classification to use for county and township roads? Is the right place to ask? Thanks. Padraic 18:03, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
User:Padraic 18:03, 13 July 2008
Mapping of Prov/Nat Parks, Warden stations, etc.?
As I have just returned from a 4 week long holiday-trip to Canada and mapped most of my moves with GPS, I would like to put this now on OSM. Are there any suggestions on how to map national and provincional parks? Would suggest 'leisure:park' besides an name tag (e.g. 'Banff National Park'). In addition, I would as well like to document campgrounds and picnic/rest areas, which are pretty obvious (tourism:camp_site/caravan_site/picnic_site) but how about Warden stations: would you use tourism:information although this is not exactly correct? --Danboss 13:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
Bus Stop Tagging
Is it possible to start up a discussion about tagging standards for municipal bus stops? Canada:Manitoba:Winnipeg has started a discussion, but I'd like to see something standardized across the country.
User:Acinom 21:57, 7 June 2009
...... (this is the stuff from the old page & should be condensed and added into the main page) --acrosscanadatrails 00:57, 26 March 2010 (UTC) For specific provincial tagging, see the list on the Canadian tagging guidelines page.
- See Map Features for most everything else.
User:Acrosscanadatrails is adjusting this chart to become Canadian Specific, because it merges with Canadian Highway tags. He will add it in. (will need to notify the creator of the previous page to help edit, so for now it stays on this page)
I removed this big chart as it would require new maintenance. I hope that "for now it stays on this page" means that in 2022 it can be removed Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 19:15, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
City subdivisions
How to subdivide cities?
A couple of us have started mapping boundaries for neighbourhoods in Winnipeg. Winnipeg is subdivided by several schemes:
- Winnipeg City > Community committees > Wards > Neighbourhoods
- Winnipeg City > Community areas > Neighbourhood clusters > Neighbourhoods
- Winnipeg Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) > Winnipeg Census Division no. 11 (Winnipeg CA) > Census tracts > Census dissemination areas
- Provincial electoral divisions > polls
- Federal electoral districts > polls
There are also school divisions, community centre catchments, and probably more.
Winnipeg also has some unique designated areas, which may or may not share boundaries with the neighbourhood system: Downtown (per Downtown Zoning By-Law 100/2004), the Inner City (defined by the Core Area Initiative), the Exchange District (a National Historic Site of Canada),
There are also traditional and commonly-used names, which don't correspond to any current political or administrative boundaries. These include Osborne Village (not the same as the Osborne neighbourhood), Norwood Flats (officially Norwood West neighbourhood), West Kildonan (a former city, whose name appears in the larger Lord Selkirk–West Kildonan community committee and the smaller West Kildonan Industrial neighbourhood) etc.
In Winnipeg's case, the wards, being represented by city councillors, are the most important local political subdivision. But the scheme of community areas and neighbourhoods is probably the most useful for navigation, because it includes most commonly-used names of suburbs and neighbourhoods.
Which of these should be mapped? Should we stick to admin_level 9 and 10, or also use 11 to capture all of the levels? Should we map the overlapping schemes, or just choose one? Should every neighbourhood be mapped, or be selected (many of Winnipeg's industrial neighbourhoods are named for convenience, but the names are seldom used)?
What schemes are already mapped in other cities? —Michael Z. 2011-02-28 18:22 z 18:22, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
- Please consider reading and contributing to the Neighborhood article and associated talk page. Most likely we should create a new value for the place=* key. -- Joshdoe 12:54, 18 April 2011 (BST)
- I have written up what is being put into practice for Winnipeg at Canada:Manitoba:Winnipeg#Wards_and_neighbourhoods. Please have a look, comment and correct. —Michael Z. 2011-09-29 03:33 z
Tagging houses with the same housenumber, but different "units"
It seems that many contributors are struggling with tagging areas where buildings share the same house number (like 590 Battle Street), but with distinct units (52-590 Battle street, which means that this is at 590 Battle Street, unit 52).
I think it may be useful to remind it on the Canadian tagging guidelines: the best way to tag these addresses is by adding addr:unit=52. In fact, people tend to tag with the renderer in mind, but it's not what should be done. (discussion here: https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/39962/how-to-tag-block-of-apartments-with-units
Bicycle/pedestrian on motorway
I would like to add recommendation to explicitely tag access=* on highway=motorway which allow pedestrian/bicycles. highway=motorway implies access=no and not every candian highway=motorway is only motor_vehicle=yes.--Jojo4u (talk) 19:52, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Saints in street names in Ontario
Hello,
I have started a discussion about "St." in street names like "St. Clair Avenue". I am suggesting that contrary to current practice in Toronto (at least), it should not be expanded to "Saint Clair" if city documents and other official sources do not expand it. Please see https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2019-March/009179.html for the message including some reasoning and examples, and follow links in https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2019-March/thread.html#9179 for follow-ups. Please feel free to respond on the mailing list or here, I can forward your comments here to mailing list if you wish.
Thanks, Jarek Piórkowski (talk) 17:29, 15 March 2019 (UTC)