[Tagging] Track grades

[David Bannon]

Jesse, you are very welcome !

I have campaigned on this topic a couple of times but without really
achieving any consensus. Chief problem is some people's fear of
'subjectiveness'.

I don't really care exactly how it is done as long as we end up with a
clear model advising people whether or not they should attempt a
particular road. I have posted references to lost lives as a result of
bad decisions. Its easier to get people to take notice of simply
presented data. Too much detail scares most people ....

My pet solution was based around tracktype= with two legs, (a) we
reassert that tracktype= applies to all highway=, not just
highway=track. This was the original intention. (b) extend the five
grades by another three, being 4wd recommended, required and extreme.

Another approach is to make wider use of 4wd_only=yes. Extend it to have
the 'recommended' and 'extreme' values. I was advised that tags starting
with a number were a problem in mapnik but others have dismissed that
and a new default render has taken over now.

I prefer the tracktype= model as it has pretty wide use world wide,
4wd_only= does not yet get much use outside of Australia.

Please see Unsealed and 4wd roads in -
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Australian_Tagging_Guidelines

Some more ranting on my wiki page (inc discussion)
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Davo

David






On Tue, 2014-07-08 at 13:00 -0600, Jesse Crawford wrote:
> Apologies if this is the wrong list, I'm new to the community.
> 
> 
> On the wiki talk page for tracktype [1] there is some discussion from
> Australians of this property not properly reflecting road usability.
> Here in desert New Mexico I am working on significantly improving
> mapping of tracks, and I have the same problem. Many tracks here are
> apparently Grade 1 or 2 as they are made up of well-compacted gravel
> and exposed bedrock. However, due to grade or unevenness they are
> often unsuitable (and unsafe) for 2WD or low-clearance vehicles. These
> paths are often quite dangerous to be stuck on, miles away from the
> nearest person and beyond phone reception.
> 
> 
> It seems that there are properties to express information like
> evenness, but they are not taken into account by the standard renderer
> while the Grade is. Are there any plans to redefine Grade or create a
> new property for use by renderers that directly expresses the
> usability of a road?
> 
> 
> My suggestion would be adding a property (perhaps "suitability") with
> values of "2wd" and "4wd," which matches the semantics used by e.g.
> Forest Service maps which often show 4WD-only tracks with a different
> line.
> 
> 
> As a second but similar question, off-highway vehicles are a popular
> pasttime here and there are many tracks intended for ATVs or
> dirtbikes, not wide enough for SUVs. Is there a best practice for
> tagging these types of paths?
> 
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
>   [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:tracktype
> 
> 
> Jesse B. Crawford
> Student, Information Technology
> New Mexico Inst. of Mining & Tech
> 
> jcrawford at cs.nmt.edu | jesse at jbcrawford.us
> http://cs.nmt.edu/~jcrawford | http://jbcrawford.us
> 
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