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

[Zeke Farwell]

Thank you all for the positive feedback!

Regarding "minor" vs "low importance"  I'll quote my previous statement on
the subject from earlier in this thread:

In an earlier draft I used the phrase "minor land access roads".  I
> received feedback that the word minor may not be clear enough when
> translated into other languages so I changed it to "low importance land
> access roads".  "low usage" could also work but I think "minor" or "low
> importance" is preferable.  It really is about the relative importance in
> the road network in the same way we decide if unclassified, tertiary,
> secondary, etc is appropriate.  track is of lower importance to the network
> than these other classifications.
>

The word minor is used throughout the page and it would make sentences too
verbose to replace every instance with "low importance".   However, if
enough people feel strongly that "low importance" is better than "minor" in
the initial paragraph, I think it works fine.  It's really a very minor
(😉) issue since the terms mean the same thing.

What exactly is considered "minor" or "low importance" can definitely vary
across the world.  I feel it would be best to document these variations on
region or country specific pages rather than by further complicating the
global definition.


I think expanding "regular road network" to "regular public road network"
or just changing it to "public road network" may be an improvement.  It
does risk suggesting that track roads are never publicly accessible (which
is not true), but I think the phrase can work if we agree that "public road
network" means "commonly used by the general public" and so while tracks
may be legally accessible to the public they mostly serve a narrower subset
of users.  I don't see the value in adding the word "local".  I did also
add this footnote to help clarify:

The "regular road network" consists of unclassified, tertiary, and higher
> road classifications. Track roads are mostly not for general motor vehicle
> traffic, but are used by some subset. So these ways are seen as something a
> bit less than a road and not really considered part of the public,
> standard, or regular road network.
>
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Ezekielf/Tag:highway%3Dtrack#cite_note-1


I agree that for roads within industrial style agricultural faculties,
highway=service is probably more appropriate than highway=track in most
cases.  To me it seems that a facility like this would qualify as an
"industrial facility" and so would be covered without adding further words
to the page.  Do more people feel strongly about documenting this specific
case?
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