[Tagging] Proposed rewrite Of highway=track wiki page - Third Draft

[Zeke Farwell]

On 8 Apr 2021, at 01:44, Kevin Broderick <ktb at kevinbroderick.com> wrote:

> The only other caveat I'd bring up is with the "not a track" bullet for "A
> trail, path, or other way that is not intended for motor vehicles"; I don't
> know if "not used for motor vehicles by the public" or something similar
> might be a little better.
>

On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 3:55 AM Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com>
wrote:

> maybe we could add “that is not OR NO MORE intended for motor vehicles”.
> Some tracks are actually old roads which have been replaced by a newer
> road.
>


The bullet point in question is an example of a situation where
highway=track is not appropriate:

   - A trail, path, or other way that is not intended for motor vehicles.
   See highway=path and highway=pedestrian

I think I will revise it to this:

   - A trail or path that is not intended for motor vehicles.  See
   highway=path, footway, cycleway, and bridleway

The goal of this bullet point is to state that if a way can more accurately
be tagged as path, footway, cycleway, or bridleway then one of those should
be used instead.  To me it seems that to qualify as highway=track, a way
should get some amount of usage by four wheeled motor vehicles.  This may
be very rare in some cases with the majority of use being other transport
types.  However, if the way is really not intended for motor vehicles at
all, then it seems to me that highway=track isn't appropriate.  Of course
workers might drive a four wheeled motor vehicle on a path, footway,
cycleway, or bridleway (if wide enough) to do maintenance or in an
emergency, so it's hard to draw an exact line between ways used by motor
vehicles and ways that are not.  Still I think it is fair to say that a
highway=track is generally intended for some motor vehicles, while a path
is generally not.

Another option would be to swap the condition of "intent" for a condition
of "width":

   - A trail or path that is not wide enough for a typical four wheeled
   motor vehicle.  See highway=path, footway, cycleway, and bridleway

I had something similar to this in a previous draft and received feedback
that defining a minimum width was a bad idea.  Four wheeled motor vehicles
vary in width (mini tractors to dump trucks) so how can we say what is
typical?  I feel this works fine and we can say it is up to local mappers
to decide what they consider a common or typical vehicle width in their
region.
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