[OSM-newbies] The classic U.S. gravel road

[James Ewen]

I work my way down in classification layers to get to the appropriate
classification.

If I were to label any gravel road as a track, there would be
secondary highways labelled as tracks around here.

I drop from trunk to primary to secondary to tertiary. Most of our
main grid roads are tagged as tertiary as that is their function. From
there, subdivision roads are tagged as residential as that is their
function.

Some secondary highways are gravel roads, some residential or service
roads are paved asphalt.

By the time I'm down to tagging a road as a track, it's usually not
much more that some wheel ruts overgrown with encroaching trees.

James

On 1/6/11, john at jfeldredge.com <john at jfeldredge.com> wrote:
> My mother's family moved from the Northeastern USA to California, by
> automobile, in the late 1920's.  From what she told me, and what I have
> read, many of the roads in the desert portions of the American West in those
> days didn't even have gravel on them; they were just a collection of ruts
> left by previous vehicles, with, if you were lucky, a few signposts at
> junctions.  It took her family three weeks to drive across the USA, which
> today would take four or five days by car, or a few hours by plane.
>
> I can well believe that some side roads would still be in this condition.
>
> -------Original Email-------
> Subject :Re: [OSM-newbies] The classic U.S. gravel road
> From  :mailto:techlady at techlady.com
> Date  :Thu Jan 06 14:39:55 America/Chicago 2011
>
>
> John,
>
>          Thanks for your comment.
>          For an education on tracks, check out the Navajo Reservation in
> Arizona, where there are true "tracks" everywhere. Before the advent of
> modern roadways, people just made their own, and in desert country a pickup
> truck or even a horse-drawn wagon can cut a significant track. Because it's
> a desert, nothing grows back for decades. So they all are still there,
> mostly abandoned by their makers but visible on Yahoo and Bing. Luckily, the
> Navajo now have a sophisticated GIS Department with good maps, especially
> for the roads they maintain. But, it's still an adventure mapping it all,
> and the place is as big as New England!
>
>  Best wishes,
>
>  Charlotte
>
>
>  At 12:04 PM 1/6/2011, you wrote:
>  So far, the only road that I have tagged as a track was a one-lane,
> unnamed, and poorly-maintained gravel road laid out in an
> otherwise-overgrown field, and intended for use by trucks maintaining a
> series of billboards along an Interstate Highway (a motorway, to use the
> British term).
>
>  -------Original Email-------
>  Subject :Re: [OSM-newbies] The classic U.S. gravel road
>  From  :
> mailto:rwelty at averillpark.net <mailto:rwelty at averillpark.net>
>  Date  :Thu Jan 06 13:37:24 America/Chicago 2011
>
>
>  On 1/6/11 2:23 PM, Charlotte Wolter wrote: Hello everyone,
>
>           In the U.S. most rural and some suburban areas have mostly
> two-lane gravel roads. These are not tracks. They are regularly maintained,
> usually by the county. They often follow the one-mile grid lines common in
> the United States.
>           However, I haven't been able to find an equivalent in OSM tagging.
> They are not tracks, which implies something opportunistic and not
> maintained by government. The photo accompanying "unclassified" shows a
> narrow paved road like many rural roads I have seen in the U.K. But, these
> are not narrow--they usually are at least two lanes wide--and they are not
> paved.
>           So, how should I tag them, or do we need something new for the
> United States?
>   i generally use unclassified (or sometimes residential if there is a lot
> of
>   housing) with surface=gravel. set maxspeed as appropriate.
>
>   i would only use track for an unnamed road, most of the gravel roads
>   have names or street numbers in the US. take a look at the road grid
>   in rural Iowa sometime. almost all gravel, heavily used and maintained,
>   all numbered/named.
>
>   richard
>
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>  --
>  John F. Eldredge -- john at jfeldredge.com
>  "Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly
>  is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
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>  Charlotte Wolter
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>  Santa Monica, California
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>  techlady at techlady.com
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