[Tagging] Use of highway=track vs highway=service cemeteries, parks, allotment gardens, golf courses, and recreation areas

Joseph Eisenberg joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com
Thu Feb 25 17:48:09 UTC 2021


Is it appropriate to use highway=track for minor access ways in parks,
allotments, recreation grounds, cemeteries, and golf courses?

I've just updated the highway=track page after there was a long discussion
by US based mappers and addition of a USA-specific section.

It appears that the debatable uses of highway=track in the USA are the same
issues that I've seen in Europe and Indonesia, so I've re-written a couple
sections of the page to mention that the tag can be used for roads to
access areas for firefighting, hunting, fishing, birdwatching, gathering
mushrooms, and so on, in addition to logging and agriculture, and that they
can be used for purely recreational purposes. There is now also a section
about debatable usage (e.g. for any unpaved road, or for any rough/slippery
road, things which can be specified with surface=, tracktype= and
smoothness= however).

One question that is not clear globally is if use of highway=track for
minor access ways in parks, allotments, recreation grounds, cemeteries, and
golf courses is correct as similar to agricultural, forestry and
recreational use, or if it is more appropriate to use highway=service.

It seems this is done commonly in parts of the USA and I've seen it in
Poland and some places in Germany too, but there also seem to be mappers
who consider it incorrect tagging.

-- Joseph Eisenberg
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