[OSM-newbies] are roads driveable?

[Aspen Swartz]

Guillaume,

You can find descriptions of what the different road types are on the
wiki.  Go to the main wiki page, click on map features, and scroll
down to Highway.  Or go straight to
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features#Highway
That has a brief description of what the road type is.  If you click
on the road type ("motorway" or "path") there's a more detailed
description, including how to map.  The reverse of how to map is more
or less how to read.

None of the categories are hard-and-fast, and especially since it's a
user-generated map, your mileage on each road in your car may vary.
Off the top of my head though, "footway", "path" and "pedestrian"
probably won't take vehicles; "track" may only be suitable for 4-wheel
drive vehicles; and in rural areas "driveway" and "residential" may
not be free to access. "unclassified" may be tagged that way because
the mapper didn't know the nature of the road.  All the other
roadtypes look driveable to me.

Aspen
(eulochon)

> Hello all,
>
> I have a follow-up question to my earlier newbie question regarding getting the shapefiles. I now have them (thanks!) and am working on interpreting the "highway" (contains all roads) shapefile.
>
> Below is the list of road-types contained in the shapefiles (18 different categories in all).
>
> Where can I find information that defines what all of these terms mean? Specifically, I just need to know which roads can be driven on, and which cannot.
>
> Thanks again,
> Guillaume
>
> "highway" types =
> 'residential'
> 'track'
> 'trunk'
> 'secondary'
> 'motorway_link'
> 'primary'
> 'service'
> 'motorway'
> 'tertiary'
> 'footway'
> 'unclassified'
> 'primary_link'
> 'trunk_link'
> 'secondary_link'
> 'path'
> 'Driveway'
> 'pedestrian'
> 'road'
>
> ---
> http://www.mauger.org/guillaume
>