"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
arth.li...


Has anyone actually looked at the links i posted? Specifically, the second
one?

Well I have for one and it's a complete work of fiction. I'm surprised
no one else has commented already. The straight roman road that it shows
crossing the Thames and heading into Victoria

You mean Porto. The road shown on the map terminates in Porto. In
Portugal. Having crossed London, southern England, the English Channel,
France, the Bay of Biscay, and northern Spain.


No I don't mean Porto. I am talking about the northern end where a
dual carriageway is shown carving through south west London (and
further afield) and into central London. I don't think it is a simple
error as someone has gone to the trouble of merging this ficticious
road with the other real roads and moving the street names as well. I
can't understand why anyone should want to waste their time doing so.

Peter

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, John Rowland wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Dec 2008, Brian Watson wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
h.li...
Evening all,

While pondering the nature of southwest London, i turned to
OpenStreetMap: http://openstreetmap.org/

I noticed that the main road heading out towards Portsmouth was very
straight - a Roman road, i assumed. I hadn't realised that. I
followed it, to see how far it went. And was quite surprised by the
answer. It goes by the name of Strutton Ground, and starts here,
near Parliament:

You do know that there were a lot of straight roads before the Roans
invaded, don't you?

A straight line being the shortest route between two points was not
a Roman discovery.

Has anyone actually looked at the links i posted? Specifically, the
second one?

Yes. But to be fair to them, they do have up-to-date portrayals of Ariel Way
and Rainsford Road, unlike Google Maps and Windows Live Local.

Oh, absolutely - where OSM is good, it's very good indeed. Cambridge is
superb.

My main complaint is that the map on the standard interface isn't
hyperlinky enough - they have all these things marked, which are in their
database, but there's no way to get information on them. I want to be able
to click on a pub, or road, or anything, and get a little popup of
information about it. Even a tooltip or something would be nice.

tom

--
Big Bang. No god. Fadeout. End. -- Stephen Baxter

Tom Anderson wrote:
"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
h.li...

While pondering the nature of southwest London, i turned to
OpenStreetMap:
http://openstreetmap.org/

The fact that it's a straight line makes me suspect it's based on a
simple error or glitch: someone meant to enter a road linking (eg)
points 100 and 734327, but typed 734372 for the end, which happens to
be rather far way. Possibly the sort of thing some simple validation
steps would catch.

If data was hand-entered in this way there would be such errors all over the
shop. I imagine it's actually caused by a GPS error, where a GPS unit
suddenly thought it was in Portugal for a few seconds, and the user didn't
check before submitting the data.

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, Peter Heather wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
h.li...

Has anyone actually looked at the links i posted? Specifically, the second
one?

Well I have for one and it's a complete work of fiction. I'm surprised
no one else has commented already. The straight roman road that it shows
crossing the Thames and heading into Victoria

You mean Porto. The road shown on the map terminates in Porto. In
Portugal. Having crossed London, southern England, the English Channel,
France, the Bay of Biscay, and northern Spain.

No I don't mean Porto. I am talking about the northern end where a dual
carriageway is shown carving through south west London (and further
afield) and into central London.

Oops, yes, of course, sorry.

I don't think it is a simple error as someone has gone to the trouble of
merging this ficticious road with the other real roads and moving the
street names as well. I can't understand why anyone should want to waste
their time doing so.

I assume the merging happened automatically. I think that unless road
crossings are marked as being multi-level, the system treats them as
junctions. Or did you mean merging it with the roads at the end? Yes, i'm
not sure how that could have happened.

Which street names were moved?

Anyway, it seems to be fixed now - i can still see the northern bit at the
highest zoom level, but it's gone from the other zoom levels.

tom

--
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that worked. -- Gall's Law

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, John Rowland wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
h.li...

While pondering the nature of southwest London, i turned to
OpenStreetMap:
http://openstreetmap.org/

The fact that it's a straight line makes me suspect it's based on a
simple error or glitch: someone meant to enter a road linking (eg)
points 100 and 734327, but typed 734372 for the end, which happens to
be rather far way. Possibly the sort of thing some simple validation
steps would catch.

If data was hand-entered in this way there would be such errors all over
the shop.

Unless the data is mostly entered automatically, but there are occasional
hand-edits.

I imagine it's actually caused by a GPS error, where a GPS unit suddenly
thought it was in Portugal for a few seconds, and the user didn't check
before submitting the data.

Also possible.

tom

--
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that worked. -- Gall's Law

On Dec 3, 4:31*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, Peter Heather wrote:
"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.64.0812021750470.24011@urchin .earth.li...

Has anyone actually looked at the links i posted? Specifically, the second
one?

Well I have for one and it's a complete work of fiction. I'm surprised
no one else has commented already. The straight roman road that it shows
crossing the Thames and heading into Victoria

You mean Porto. The road shown on the map terminates in Porto. In
Portugal. Having crossed London, southern England, the English Channel,
France, the Bay of Biscay, and northern Spain.

No I don't mean Porto. I am talking about the northern end where a dual
carriageway is shown carving through south west London (and further
afield) and into central London.

Oops, yes, of course, sorry.

I don't think it is a simple error as someone has gone to the trouble of
merging this ficticious road with the other real roads and moving the
street names as well. I can't understand why anyone should want to waste
their time doing so.

I assume the merging happened automatically. I think that unless road
crossings are marked as being multi-level, the system treats them as
junctions. Or did you mean merging it with the roads at the end? Yes, i'm
not sure how that could have happened.

Which street names were moved?

Anyway, it seems to be fixed now - i can still see the northern bit at the
highest zoom level, but it's gone from the other zoom levels.

tom

It did have Strutton Ground (and some other names that had been
'pinched' from elsewhere) marked on the mythical dual carriageway, but
as you say, the 'roman road' seems to have vanished completely now, at
least in London, and Strutton Ground is shown attached to correct
road. Someone must have been listening.

Peter

On Dec 2, 11:26 pm, "Brian Watson" wrote:
A straight line being the shortest route between two points was not a Roman
discovery.

That discovery seems to have been lost on the last few generations of
motorway and dual carriageway builders however.

B2003

On Dec 4, 12:12*pm, wrote:
On Dec 2, 11:26 pm, "Brian Watson" wrote:

A straight line being the shortest route between two points was not a Roman
discovery.

That discovery seems to have been lost on the last few generations of
motorway and dual carriageway builders however.

B2003

It may not be generally known that a basic principle of good highway
design is that you shouldn't have very long straight lengths of road
as it can induce boredom and drivers can lose attention. Long gentle
curves are preferable in keeping drivers aware and are also more
pleasing on the eye. Mind you, the opportunity in this country for any
long straight is pretty remote, what with having to avoid unnecessry
demolition and minimising earthworks and structures. In any case the
funding arrangement for new roads is such that there is rarely enough
to build more than a couple of miles of new road at a time and the new
road then has to join back to the existing network.

Peter

On Dec 4, 12:54 pm, Peter Heather wrote:
It may not be generally known that a basic principle of good highway
design is that you shouldn't have very long straight lengths of road
as it can induce boredom and drivers can lose attention. Long gentle

Believe me , driving a long distance on a motorway induces boredom
straight or not. Anyway , long straight roads in the US and europe
don't seem to contribute to a higher accident rate.

funding arrangement for new roads is such that there is rarely enough
to build more than a couple of miles of new road at a time and the new
road then has to join back to the existing network.

Good point, hadn't thought of that.

B2003

On Dec 4, 1:53*pm, wrote:
It may not be generally known that a basic principle of good highway
design is that you shouldn't have very long straight lengths of road
as it can induce boredom and drivers can lose attention. Long gentle

Believe me , driving a long distance on a motorway induces boredom
straight or not. Anyway , long straight roads in the US and europe
don't seem to contribute to a higher accident rate.

Actually, they do seem to (or at least, UK motorways are demonstrably
safer than those elsewhere, which is consistent with the view that
they do):
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/international3.html

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org