[OSM-newbies] tertiary dirt roads?

[Thomas Meller]

James,
I tell you how I do it in Switzerland.

I know the situation. I have been in the Sahara desert several times.
I understand your philosophy. It's the same as mine.

I do not care for legal issues. I don't care for who might be the maintainer.
Mostly, I cannot prove this information. Most unpaved ways are private here.
I am a road user. I see whether it is paved, I see how wide it is, I see whether two lorries can bypass without leaving the road.
That's my criteria for tagging a road.

We are working on a STREET MAP.
We create a map for TRAFFIC.

So, I focus on usability, not on rightfulness nor on ownership nor responsibility.
If someone wants to have this tagged correctly, he/she may create additional tags as to his/her liking.

If the way is usable as an interconnect for main traffic, I would not tag it as 'unclassified', at least if it connects towns and alike, and not (one or more) single houses. If it makes access to a wide landscape possible, I would tag it as tertiary, maybe as unclassified if it's very narrow.

Tag it as 'gradeX' to make transparent, that it may change it's condition depending on the weather. Or else tag it as 'surface=*' if it does not change it's usability over time.

I ride an offroad bike in Switzerland.
I often use forest roads, tracks and alike.
The tags in OSM do not fit these ways perfectly, but they give the map user an idea what sort of road he can expect.

Have a look on my user page (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Tmeller) to find a tagging scheme I use for further aspects concerning usability. The gradeX scheme is not really bad, though.
It's like the sac_scale for hiking paths. You can't bet on it but it's at least helpful.
My starting point was here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/surface_unification

And what's more: OSM still lacks tags for roads and rivers which are only available outside of a certain season (Wadi/Oued, roads in Niger inner delta and alike). If that's of interest for you, create something as to your liking.

Thomas

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:02:48 -0700
> Von: James Ewen <ve6srv at gmail.com>
> An: newbies at openstreetmap.org
> Betreff: Re: [OSM-newbies] tertiary dirt roads?

> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:
> 
> > If it's a private road, I'm less inclined to call it a tertiary.
> > "unclassified" doesn't sound bad in this case.
> >
> > Given that the primary, secondary and tertiary designations belong to
> > the national, state and county/city/forest service/BIA/other
> > subordinate systems by default, I'm generally disinclined to consider
> > any private road as a tertiary or higher unless it's got a real
> > reference number
> 
> Okay, so above, you would consider a forest service road as tertiary.
> The roads that I am talking about are forest service roads. They just
> are built and maintained by the companies that work in the area,
> rather than the government. If these companies want access back into
> the bush to drag trees out, it is up to them to build and maintain the
> access roads.
> 
> I'm trying to find an equivalent road using Google Street view, but
> it's a little challenging...
> 
> Here's a link to a road through the bush near Salem, Or.
> http://tinyurl.com/yjh7xgw
> 
> This is a paved 2 lane road. If you were to double the width of this
> road, straighten it out,  and change the surface to gravel, you'd have
> something similar to what I am talking about.
> 
> 
> 
> Here's a link to a smaller road that takes you from the government
> road grid up to the top of Whitecourt Mountain where there's a
> forestry lookout tower, and also a bunch of radio towers.
> http://tinyurl.com/y9notsa
> 
> Here's a link to a paved road in the bush in Oregon.
> http://tinyurl.com/yhpd4xw
> 
> Both are at the same zoom level. The smaller road in Alberta is larger
> and easier to see from the air than the one in Oregon.
> 
> Here's the Oregon area in OSM...
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=45.156&lon=-123.5106&zoom=15
> 
> SW Gilbert Creek Road is tagged as a track... a paved striped roadway!
> 
> Zoom in and out using Google maps... you'll see some of the main
> roadways, ones that you could travel long distances between far flung
> towns upon still show when zoomed out, making the map useful for
> planning a route. If all the roads are tagged as tiny little trails in
> the bush, the road map information becomes useless.
> 
> 
> > I'm not quite certain what you're going for...
> 
> I'm going for creating a map database that would be useful for people
> travelling in the area. I can turn off of a government highway, and
> drive for 2 hours on private roads, popping out onto another
> government highway 100 miles away. I can do this using maps that
> depict these private roads in such a way that I can easily pick out
> roads that go between the places I want to go. I can also look at a
> tighter zoom level map to see the minor roads that will take me to the
> intermediate destination, such as a radio tower on a hilltop somewhere
> between those two government highways. Try planning a route where
> you're either looking at a blank page, or having to look at a super
> detailed map of perhaps 10 square miles.
> 
> Try planning your route between Salem and Corvalis but you'll have to
> do it at zoom level 14 on OSM, and pretend that all the roads are
> residential, where they are all white, including the primary highways,
> and motorways. How long would it take you to figure out the route to
> take between the two cities? Would you be able to pick the fastest and
> best quality roads?
> 
> I am talking about setting road tags to help people understand the
> road network. The tags may not exactly match the descriptors on the
> OSM wiki, but I don't like in the UK...
> 
> James
> VE6SRV
> 
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