<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Jul 9, 2015, at 4:57 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer <<a href="mailto:dieterdreist@gmail.com" class="">dieterdreist@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div><blockquote type="cite" class="">I may be wrong, but I've always seen (rural) service roads as (typically relatively short) access ways </blockquote></div><div><br class=""></div><div>I normally do too. But Alleys are sometimes a kilometer long, paralleling the major road. This idea is what led me to Alley at first. </div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">Ways with a lot of crossings/bifurcations won't be service roads because they will serve some collecting/distribution/through traffic function that goes beyond access to one or two sites.</span></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">This is the hard part of what I’m trying to explain.. Maybe this occurs in Europe too, but having travelled all over California - driving, biking, trekking - through several hundred miles of tracks through the mountains, on several hundred calls to repair computers in rural areas with farms and ranches - </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I have never seen anything like the tangle of roads Japan generates - nor the condition the more unimportant roads are kept at. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I imagine the easiest way to explain this would be the tangle of residential roads that occurs in old neighborhoods. there is usually one or two unclassified streets that are the main route through the collection of houses, leading to a larger arterial road. and if you really wanted to, you could drive only on the residential roads through the neighborhood, but it would be a total waste of time - as they make you go longer, and keep leading back and crossing the unclassified road over and over. Some may lead off to access the houses on a hill - but there is no reason to go up the hill and back down because there is nothing there besides houses.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">These roads have a similar density and distribution - but what they access is rice, corn, banboo, and cedar trees. There occasionally is a building, a tower, or a farmer’s house, but for the most part it is a tangle of roads you would never want to be directed down, nor use for “cutting through” because you would be parallel to a better road 200m away or you would keep coming back to a trunk road at intersections with no no safe way to enter traffic. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">They allow access to the tracks and paths, and link everything back to the unclassified roads, which in turn lad to the larger roads. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">In rare cases, like my biking example, you might want to traverse the long way through, but seeing them as a bunch of service roads / tracks lets you know exactly what roads are what. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Here is a link to the google maps of my area, the area I traversed between towns. many of the rendered roads should be unclassified, but some of them should be classified as a smaller service=rural. A lot of them are tracks as well. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">the spread of paved roads is enormous, and tangled to hell. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@36.4266157,139.1978983,6412m/data=!3m1!1e3" class="">https://www.google.com/maps/@36.4266157,139.1978983,6412m/data=!3m1!1e3</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">here is an area I was mapping a while ago:</div><div class=""><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@36.4424998,139.2111363,1603m/data=!3m1!1e3" class="">https://www.google.com/maps/@36.4447783,139.2111792,1603m/data=!3m1!1e3</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Which of those is a good road to use? the second choice? and what is a tiny road you would curse being routed down, and what is a track?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/36.4437/139.2109" class="">http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/36.4437/139.2109</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">this area in particular is a good example of why some kind of service=rural would be useful. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I really trust your guys opinion - but this is something I have never seen in America. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Javbw</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>