[Tagging] highway = track vs. residential

[John Willis]

Javbw
> On Jan 8, 2016, at 8:43 AM, Dave Swarthout <daveswarthout at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> hat is used for agricultural or other purposes

Question on that:

https://goo.gl/maps/Nvbmz1Z4bJp

We have a lot of public roads in Japan that, on import, were set to "unclassified". In rural areas - many are wrong. 

But as the roads are not residential, and not practical for through traffic, calling them a unclassified similarly seems wrong. They are public roads, and decently maintained, but very very narrow, and spiderweb between the more major residential and unclassified roads. I have tagged many of them as highway=service - as they are a rural equivalent to alleys (service=alley) - as they have major width limitations, parallel larger roads, and are covered with driveways (to greenhouses, etc) track intersections - they just happen to be agricultural tracks and tractor ramps, but are very similar to alleys leading to driveways and garages.

Eventually the fields are sold, houses built, road widened and the road turns into residential - and the agricultural tracks disappear under houses. A new residential street is born. 

I tag it this way because calling it a track or residential is misleading in my situation - one that doesn't exist whatsoever in California - so I am wondering if this situation (unbelievably spiderwebbed *rural* public roads where one is the "through" road and the other grid out, and then further grid out into farming tracks) is seemingly uncommon in other places. 

I have never seen a place with so many public, passable, routable roads in a rural area ever. It is like a city grid without the buildings. 

Having them render as residential or tracks is very misleading - same as rendering 2.5m public alley ways in Tokyo as "tracks". 

Being able to see the difference between the "easy road" the "rural alley" road and the "farming track" is paramount. There are tons of tracks along the river and up into logging cuts, I'm not talking about those - and I don't want these confused with them either. 

Google and Apple both have the issue, and I get routed down a road where it is easy to drive - but only 20km/h. Next to it is the road I should be on. This is because this distinction is not in their data - just "unclassified" and "2.5m width". It isn't residential nor track.  The duckiness of the road is lost. 


I would almost suggest service=rural or minor_rural to document this. 

Opinions? 

Javbw