[Osmf-talk] Tagging standards

[Jeffrey Friedl]

> > Japan has local rules that _require_ a very rough mountain path near me, impassable by any vehicle
>
> If I'm understanding this correctly, the path is classified as a prefectural road but isn't maintained for vehicle use?
> I think there should be exceptions for cases like these to match the actual condition of the road.

Correct, it's likely a 1000-year-old trail that somehow has an official designation by the prefecture as a "road", but it is nothing but the shadow of a very rough trail.

Having _some_ kind of tagging standards could help curtail stuff like this.

> I wonder if this has come up in the Japanese OSM community before?

This kind of discussion should be in a different thread, but in short for those interested: the Japanese local has decided that the traditional way of paper mapping in Japan, where roads maintained by the national government are given the most visual prominence.  This has always been true, even if those roads are perilous one-lane mountain roads that are, in actual practice, bypassed by wide, well-paved modern roads maintained by a prefecture or city.  As such, the perilous one-lane mountain road must get "highway=trunk" and the modern bypass might get "highway=unclassified".  There are many, many (many) examples of this, and it's obviously so unhelpful in actual practice, but it's the way it's been done for centuries so it's the way we must do it now. Sigh.

Jeffrey