[OSM-newbies] tertiary dirt roads?

[Richard Weait]

On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Charlotte Wolter <techlady at techlady.com> wrote:
> Everyone,
>
>         I need guidance on tagging where dirt roads are major ways. In
> western parts of the United States, especially the Southwest, a dirt road
> may be a major link, reaching deep into a rural area. These usually are very
> good dirt roads, wide and graded regularly. Because of their good quality,
> they provide access for the average passenger car, which often can travel
> these roads at a fairly high rate of speed, say 35 or 45 miles an hour.
>         If these ways are tagged as "track," they are rendered on the map as
> an ordinary brown line. At lower resolutions, the brown line becomes
> rendered as a dashed brown line, and the character of these roads is lost
> completely.  They are mapped like any other dirt track.
>         So I have been tagging them as tertiary roads and have added
> "tracktype=grade1."  Is this a problem? Is there an alternative?

I think that you'll add a lot of value if you add surface=dirt or
surface=gravel where those are true.  They are observable and
verifiable and less subject to interpretation based on varying
experience.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface