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A pretty standard nomenclature on maps in the US for unpaved roads
is <br>
Improved Road<br>
Unsurfaced Road (High Clearance)<br>
Four Wheel Drive<br>
Other variations exist , but not too dissimilar. <br>
Pretty simple and anyone who spends time in the mountains or forest
gets a feel for what it means and has an idea what to expect. OSM
is a mess in this regards. The inconsistency make it difficult if
not impossible to render a good map.<br>
<br>
As I read the OSM wiki, smoothness=* is the relevant tag to
distinguish between a 2wd road, a high clearance road, and a 4 wheel
drive road. Surface is important too, but isn't sufficient if
it's dirt/unpaved/ground.<br>
<br>
Unfortunately, the wiki for highway, in the section for track says:
" To describe the quality of a track, see <tt dir="ltr"
class="mw-content-ltr"
style="background:#EEF;font-size:1em;line-height:1.6"><bdi
style="white-space:nowrap"><a
href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:tracktype"
title="Key:tracktype">tracktype</a></bdi>=*</tt>. "<br>
But, as described in the wiki, tracktype is not very relevant to
the western US, since the first sentence of the description is
Solid/Mostly*/Soft. Perhaps relevant to the English countryside,
but the roads around here are usually Solid, but could be
smoothness:very_horrible. It seems redundant with surface=*
also. <br>
It looks like the common usage is to just use tracktype intuitively
(grade5 is 4wd even if it's Solid), and ignore the wiki & the
smoothness tag. Unfortunately its usage is inconsistent. I see
roads that are clearly (by onsite inspection) 4wd, tagged as grade2
and some graded gravel roads tagged as grade2. <br>
Tracktype could be sufficient if clarified, and if we were starting
from scratch that's what I would prefer. <br>
<br>
As I see it, two paths forward to improve this situation.<br>
1) Change the wiki for highway so it mentions Smoothness=*, and
de-emphasize tracktype=*<br>
2) Take the leading sentence mentioning Solid/Soft out of the
tracktype description (or de-emphasize it), and add more verbage
about high clearance or 4 wheel drive. There is some discussion
on the key:tracktype discussion page about adding grade6+. <br>
3) Ignore the wiki, and just use tracktype. I see in the
discussion page that is what many are doing.<br>
<br>
Thoughts?<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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