It’s important to pay attention to the capture date of the satellite imagery you are using. If the imagery is outdated, you may accidentally add roads that no longer exist, miss new connections, or incorrectly adjust alignments and tags. Always check the imagery date (and compare multiple imagery sources where available) so that your edits reflect the current on‑the‑ground situation as accurately as possible.

In the example below, a user in OSM re-introduced the previous road alignment of Kenny Street and Draper Street, which included a roundabout

Looking at the pre-selected Bing Maps Aerial, the presence of the roundabout is correct. However, changing to another imagery in OSM iD, displays the recent intersection change including a new slip lane.

None of these background imageries have a consistent, ‘most recent’ capture date, meaning you may have to change background images to which represents to closest capture data to present day.

Now changing to Bing Maps Aerial, confirms it’s capture date is older than Esri World Imagery, the roundabout should be replaced with controlled signal intersection

The changeset which replaced the incorrectly re-introduced roundabout can be found here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1296061760

Unconnected Nodes: a white node at the end of a way represents an unconnected node

Connected nodes: a grey node

Not connected to roundabout - stops too short

Not connected to roundabout - stops too far.

Connected Nodes

✅ Correctly connected

Major highways and roads will typically have relations representing it’s a part of a larger network of roads (e.g. the Bruce Highway, containing thousands of individual OSM road segments with different OSM tags)

You may want to split a road due to a change in max speed or surface cover (other examples in How to Split Roads in OSM

Right-clicking the node where you want to split may be disabled due to a parent relation

In the Relations pane in the Edit feature

Sometimes this download isn’t required, but you may want to disconnect road segments to modify an intersection, or a roundabout for instance.

When creating a roundabout from a previous road alignment, if a relation existed you may not be able to split the road. Even when downloading a relation, you will not be able to disconnect as a route relation requires that the road segments remain together.

You’ll need to split the roads on each side in this instance: How to Split Roads in OSM

In this instance, you have to select each of the segments you’ve split, delete the relations on them (Warning: ensure that only the small section you’ve split to remove is selected)

The relations on the left pane need to be deleted prior to deleting the road segment

You can now delete the segment when there are no relations - Relations (0)

Repeat the process with the other section, deleting the relations

Repeat these steps if any other road also has relations

The process of building the roundabout is identical to the guide: Roundabouts

The additional step (link from roundabouts advanced section? TBA) is to replace the relation if necessary. This final step is optional. If you skip this step this can be helpful to tick ‘I would like someone to review my edits’ so another OSM user can add these relations on your behalf.

Australia has hundreds of thousands of roads and waterways mapped in OpenStreetMap. Occasionally when mapping you may see this warning. Typically, you can ignore this, especially if the section of road you modified. However, you can quickly resolve these warnings, more details about mapping bridges and culverts can be found respectively in: