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<p><font face="Verdana">Of course, well noticed Christoph, thank you
for clarifying I mixed it up in that sentence. Perfectly correct
how we apply it in Africa.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Also in support of Florian's statement.
Exactly that is how we applied it in Africa, but there are more
countries where this general principle is applied successfully,
like South-America ans most Asian countries.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">In my opinion the US group, requesting for
the amendment and clarification in the general description look
at it from a too narrow local perspective. No where does it
explicitly say that a track cannot be used for paved roads,
nowhere does it say that highway=service roads should be paved.
That was like this even before we had the surface=* tag.<br>
We use highway=service tag for any road that is not intended for
general public use, very clear and worked sofar in thousands of
applications worldwide.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Tracks could be improved, and should, and
is, to be used on any road which doesn't fall under any other
classification and is intended, either in full, or partially for
public use. Highway=service for any road where it is not for
public use, and the access is restrained by some access
restrictions (preferable to be tagged separately) or because
it's located in an area with access restrictions or private
property. We should not consider it as being by definition in
an agricultural or rural context. For example: a highway that
is intended for firefighting access in a publicly accessible
part of a forest, where at the same time it is used for hiking
by the public, will be a track. The same highway at some part
might enter a private part of the same forest, it is not
accessible for the general public, so there yo split it and it
becomes a highway=service.<br>
Regardless if it is paved or not, the public factor is the
distinguishing factor in these case, meaning, the functional
classification.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Another example is that a publicly
accessible track, unpaved, which might be paved over time, if
the pure fact that it becomes paved without changing it's
socio-economic character or functionality, remains a track.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Greetings,</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Bert Araali<br>
</font></p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 26/02/2021 19:13, Christoph Hormann
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:202102261713.01883.osm@imagico.de">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">On Thursday 25 February 2021, Bert -Araali- Van Opstal wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">The standard highway tagging is mainly based on the physical
appearance. Not the functional or just partly the socio-economic
importance.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
The opposite is the case - standard highway tagging - with the exception
of highway=motorway - is almost purely functional in OSM. There are
some exceptions from that in local practice (like distinction between
highway=trunk and highway=primary in Germany for example). But overall
all of the main road classes are overwhelmingly used with a functional
semantic delineation. This is also something data users (both
cartographic and routing) massively rely on.
</pre>
</blockquote>
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