I've finished the municipalities in Telfair and Wheeler counties, which means it's time for the second pass. One of the things I need to tackle is the County Line Road / Telfair County Line road that runs along the board of Dodge and Telfair counties. There's actually two such roads, but the one in question runs from State Route 117 to the town of Milan. For most for the way the road straddles the county line, while the remainder meanders back and forth across the boundary. To compound the issue, this road has two official names and two different county road numbers.

Here's the problem: How to I tag this way? TIGER apparently has imported overlapping ways in places, some of which I may have destroyed because I didn't know what I was doing during the first pass. Do I redraw the road as a single way and split the meandering portion between counties? But what about the portion that's claimed by both? Do I draw it as two ways, one atop the other?

Anyone have any ideas?

I've just finished the 1st pass of Wheeler County, and have been somewhat less focused. Do I start on the towns next, or correct/add tracks and other features? Decisions, decisions. I find myself puttering about: A track here; a pond there. I hope I remember correctly where an unlisted graveyard is located. I located it based on a topo map and what I remember of the terrain.

Herein lies the problem: I'm relying on memory for some of these tracks, and I can find traces of them in Bing photomaps. But it's been years since I've been to some of these places. In some cases it's been decades. Are the roads still there beneath the trees, or have they fallen victim to new growth? So I fight temptation and post only what I can see.

I'm nearly finished with the first pass over Telfair County, Georgia. I've noted most of the county roads, tweaked a few here and there.

It's not a completed effort by any means. I only aligned a few roads to Bing. There's more to be traced, more features to add. That's just out in the county. With a few exceptions, I've yet to tackle roads in incorporated areas. On the bright side, there shouldn't be as much confusion.

For example, there's a road closed to public access, most likely due to an unsafe bridge. However, it turns out the state still considers it a county road. Then there's the unnamed roads with stop signs, a good indication that they're county maintained, but they have neither name nor county road number.

I also have a suspicion that our urban brethren would consider many "service" roads as tracks. My rule of thumb is that if you can get a car down it with ease, then it's a service road. But what we consider "with ease" might be considered barely more than a trail by others. Will have to revisit these when it comes to aligning them with Bing aerial maps.

But, that's one county with almost all the road names noted. I hope to tackle one or two more before I start on the second pass.

I've started labeling the county roads in Telfair and Wheeler. It needs to be done; it should be done. That's what led me to OSM in the first place. However, as T.S. Eliot penned about cats, the naming of roads is a difficult matter and isn't just a holiday game. And it seems that the roads in these two counties must have three or more names as well.

The problem is that until a short time ago the roads were not names at all, other than informal names that could vary from one end of the road to the other. For instance, there were two roads called Firetower in Telfair, and which you meant depended on which side of the county you were in. As with many counties in Georgia, the roads received an offical name only with the advent of a 911 system. And that should be the end of that, right?

Wrong. First of all, the 911 road name may or may not agree with the signs - where signs exist. The sign name sometimes doesn't agree with the name the US Postal Service says is the correct 911 name. And, to top it off, the Georgia Deparment of Transportation seems to have a different set, as evidenced by their signs preceding the intersections. That's the current set, by the way: The road use maps for both counties show pre-911 system names. Quite a bit of "fun."

However, there is one common denominator. Reguardless of the name, the county road number remains the same. Sometimes this is still posted on the back of the stop signs; sometimes it's posted in tiny characters on the official road signs. But it's the only consistant point.

With that in mind, here's my approach to editing the roads:

1. Go with the road sign name, where available.
2. Add or edit the name_1 tag so that it contains the correct county road number.

That way, even if there's confusion over the official name, anyone who checks can be certain of the road by checking its county number.

I drew in the boundary for Little Ocmulgee State Park, and was immediately confronted with a problem. I assumed that the area would be defined as recreation. No problem. However, when rendered the shading was only visible in the Telfair County portion. Land types overlay the park shading in Wheeler County.

It seemed that there were two ways to address this:

1. To force the area to overlay the land type.
2. Edit land type such that they terminate at the park boundary.

Neither was satisfactory. Forcing layers to overlay may be possible, but might play havoc with other features. Editing land types removes the information, and I was struck by how it so well matches the types of land within the park. What's needed is a boundary, similar to that of the adjacent town of Helena. This is the scheme used by the US Geologic Survey on their topo maps: State parks are denoted by a boundary overlaying the internal land types.

The problem is that there is no official state_park type. Still, it seemed to me to be the best solution. So, in JOSM, I copied and modified the key tags for the Helena boundary and applied it to the polygon encompassing Little Ocmulgee State Park. You can view the results by checking revision ID #7118966.

Obviously this can be changed back to area, or perhaps to some other boundary type. I'm seeking input here. How would others in the OSM community handle this problem?

You probably know where this is going. I spent a marathon JOSM session editing the roads and features in and around Little Ocmulgee State Park. It was a case of "Just one more edit" that ran well over an hour. When I went to save . . . well, there hangs the tale. As often happens, there's various errors and warnings that JOSM catches. Unfortunately, the ones from this session were not so easily resolved. Now, if I had saved after each edit, it would be a simple matter of using undo. But no: These errors were buried so deep that undo was out of the question. After various attempts at repair that only made things worse, I just put it out of it's misery. I deleted the edits.

Lesson for today: Save often enough that you don't lose an entire session when errors strike.

After I finally tagged all the paved roads I know of in Telfair and Wheeler counties, I discover a marvelous tag call surface. This removes my reluctance to classify county maintained dirt roads as tertiary. I found a Georgia DOT map for Wheeler County road use of the same type as FK270673 linked for Telfair.

I also cleaned up an error I made in drawing Jim Hammock Dr in McRae. This is a new paved road to a prison. The road is owned by either the city or the county and is worked up like a secondary road. However, it dead ends at a prison, It's not properly a service road, neither is it residential. Unclassified, perhaps? I labeled it tertiary for the time being. I really need to read the highway tag discussions.

Have tried my hand at drawing in JOSM, Interesting. Not difficult at all, though the maze of roads at Cravey Estates subdivision, my first attempt, was a bit difficult for a newbie to sort out. Instead, I extended a road on the southern end of Wheeler and drew in a private access track. No question about road type on this one.

I wasn't terribly surprised by the fragmented roads imported from TIGER. Identical fragmentation was evident in other maps. It's great to have a starting point. Really great. Wouldn't be this far along now if I had to trace every road.

Some roads are worse than others. Yesterday I tackled the Telfair County Line Rd / County Line Rd. This is a highway that meanders across the Dodge and Telfair county line. Both counties share the expense of maintenance. However, for what ever reason, this road does not share the same name. This is unfortunately common where roads cross from one county into the other, but in this instance it's downright aggravating. All sections in Telfair are called County Line Rd. All sections in Dodge, Telfair County Line Rd. Sometimes the sections are very close together. One part weaves over and under the county line, and over relatively flat land, too.

It's going to take more than trivial renaming to fix. I'll have to consult more than a field inspection to figure it out. But no one said this was going to be simple when I registered.

A few roads are blasts from the past. I was drawing in a new road in Little Ocmulgee State Park, and noticed the County Road immediately east. Except it's not a county road anymore. It's an access road that semi-follows the route shown on OpenStreetMap. But the County Road number gave me pause, and I gave some of the other roads closer inspection. Some look as though TIGER and the USGS drank from the same trough. But others, like the county road, may predate the park itself. Little Ocmulgee State Park was built by the Civilian Conservation Corp in the 1930s, so I suspect some of these roads were mapped before then.

Editing these fossils gives me an odd feeling, almost like desecration. They'll be no record of their existence after they're edited. On the other hand, maps, by definition, are products of their time, and keeping non-existent roads is just a source of confusion.

… Zobrazit celý záznam

Registered with OpenStreetmap today and began edits. The first was a state road turned over to counties, and the remainder are county roads that are now named. I went over the US highway tag definitions, and settled on tertiary as the best match.

The problem is there's no exact match with the road system in the State of Georgia. Paved county roads tend to have the same width as state roads, and are heavily traveled, even in rural areas. Unpaved county roads can be heavily traveled as well, although they tend to be narrower. However, tract isn't a good match. Tracts tend to be what we call a "field road," or run through woods. Unassigned is probably a better definition than residential, which apparently is the default for Georgia county roads on OpenStreetMap.

My goal at this time is to work on the paved county roads first before moving to the unpaved. It's probably more accurate to describe them as tertiary.

Registered with OpenStreetmap today and began edits. The first was a state road turned over to counties, and the remainder are county roads that are now named. I went over the US highway tag definitions, and settled on tertiary as the best match.

The problem is there's no exact match with the road system in the State of Georgia. Paved county roads tend to have the same width as state roads, and are heavily traveled, even in rural areas. Unpaved county roads can be heavily traveled as well, although they tend to be narrower. However, tract isn't a good match. Tracts tend to be what we call a "field road," or run through woods. Unassigned is probably a better definition than residential, which apparently is the default for Georgia county roads on OpenStreetMap.

My goal at this time is to work on the paved county roads first before moving to the unpaved. It's probably more accurate to describe them as tertiary.