I'm attempting to load osm data into a database and i've used both osm2p0 and osm2pgrouting and kept realizing I wasnt seeing anything that referenced the width of the streets.
This is important for me as I am writing a program to perform search and rescue where the size of the street is important as it can limit which vehicles can use which roads.
So I started looking in the osm.xml file and I havent see anything that references width of streets.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:width. It says the key should be width. The key width describes the actual width of a way or other feature.
Am I missing something or is width not actually provided within the OSM.
Well, if you look at the OSM tags in use, you will discover the width=* tag, that can be used for highways, too. There are also some more tags that indicate the width of a road/way: maxwidth, lanes. All of this tags are optional and you don't should expect an global coverage...
I guess most important criteria (as present for every road) is the road classification itself. But you need to take the country specific defaults into account, which is tricky and will take a lot of research.
You might want to use TrafficMining to create a custom routing profile that takes the road width into account to move your HGV vehicles. Maybe the Humaniterian OSM Team has already some experience on such technologies to assist desaster and emergency response.