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NicEd's Diary

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Route numbering in Angola

Posted by NicEd on 26 July 2016 in English.

About to start creating the non-existent relationships and important route numbers in Angola.

Can anyone assist me regarding this matter, as Angola still seems not to have a standard route marking and tagging. Also, I’d like to receive some input from any mapper experienced with the SADC Regional Trunk Road Network. The whole road system in Angola is messed up, as there are no standards, no presets, settings and rules, and unfortunately the Wiki page has little to none info on Angola, so I’d like to use the existing database and layers to start organising the whole setup. I’m open to suggestions and help.

Dealing with incorrect tags in Africa

Posted by NicEd on 17 November 2015 in English.

So today I spent quite some time correcting tags of three major roads in Luanda ANG, Kitwe/Ndola ZAM and Windhoek NAM. The three roads were tagged as freeways.

While they may kind of look like freeways, nowhere along the extension of these roads is there proper signage identifying them as such; the T3 dual carriageway from Ndola to Kitwe has many 60km/h limit zones, which automatically takes the right from that road being called a freeway.

The Windhoek B1 Western Bypass has all the structure to be tagged as freeway; however, freeway signs in Southern Africa are blue (K53 code); B1 has all its signage in green. Often authorities refrain from taking that step so that slower traffic is not restricted from using the road under the access restrictions that apply to motorways. This is the case for Windhoek.

The unnumbered road in Luanda is de facto an expressway, and it actually carries the name in Portuguese, which is Via Expressa. Also, the very intricate road configuration in Angola makes it rather difficult to always tag roads correctly, since the passing (inner) lane is also the exit lane to U-turns and other road links, which exist in a great number on most primary roads in Luanda and other cities. Non-observed speed limits range from 30km/h to 90km/h, so this factor alone doesn’t allow any of these roads to be tagged as freeways.

To the taggers who were there before me. Please understand that I corrected all your tags (about 200 of them), and this alone would possibly trigger an edit war; I strongly discourage you from doing so. If you have any enquiry about the last edits of mine, please drop a comment on this entry, or PM me.

Problem with routing

Posted by NicEd on 25 September 2015 in English.

So for sometime I’ve been breaking myself over an error in the MAPS.ME app when routing from any point in Namibia to N7 in South Africa. It fails to route me through the Noordoewer/Vioolsdrift border B1/N7 - it is unable to route directly, and instead it finds another alternative on the map which is an additional 300km or so. This is a big trouble, as visitors who might use this route, will indeed follow it thinking there are no roads in between.

Anyone help please. I tried modifying relations and even creating new roads, but it still gives me the same problem.

First obstacles in Luanda

Posted by NicEd on 23 September 2015 in English.

What at first was going to be an exciting adventure, turned out to be much more challenging than I thought. Luanda mostly doesn’t have reliable road signs and references, which makes other mappers and myself struggle to get it right.

Since I’ll be frequently going to one specific area of the city, the first thing to do will be correcting tags put especially on roads; where tertiary roads are incorrectly tagged as primary and secondary.

Then, I’ll be looking for as much cartographical info as possible, to enable me rename streets, insert metadata and as many POI’s as possible. It is going to be a rough ride.

From Windhoek to Luanda

Posted by NicEd on 3 September 2015 in English.

After about 2 months of extensive corrections and additions of various Elements of Windhoek, NAM, I’ve decided to temporarily shift my focus on Luanda, ANG, and surroundings. Many much more experienced mappers did an excellent job in making this place look like a city, but there’s still a lot of work to do. Primary focus will be public wifi spots and tertiary road names. After that, I’ll focus on residential areas of difficult access, and then get back to the main points, which by now are fairly tagged already.

Location: Mutamba, Kinanga, Luanda, Municipality of Luanda, Luanda Province, Angola

Beginnings

Posted by NicEd on 7 July 2015 in English.

So today I started mapping my most visited places, Luanda, Kitwe, Windhoek, and a bit of Lusaka. Luanda as of now looks like a huge twisted net with no direction - and the plan is making sure the place ends up being as precise as possible.

New areas of Windhoek, NAM and Kitwe, ZAM, are also being corrected.

Let’s see what’s going to happen. Really looking forward to seeing my updates on Maps.me.