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

Bert -Araali- Van Opstal bert.araali.afritastic at gmail.com
Fri Feb 26 18:15:51 UTC 2021


Of course, well noticed Christoph, thank you for clarifying I mixed it 
up in that sentence. Perfectly correct how we apply it in Africa.

Also in support of Florian's statement. Exactly that is how we applied 
it in Africa, but there are more countries where this general principle 
is applied successfully, like South-America ans most Asian countries.

In my opinion the US group, requesting for the amendment and 
clarification in the general description look at it from a too narrow 
local perspective.  No where does it explicitly say that a track cannot 
be used for paved roads, nowhere does it say that highway=service roads 
should be paved. That was like this even before we had the surface=* tag.
We use highway=service tag for any road that is not intended for general 
public use, very clear and worked sofar in thousands of applications 
worldwide.

Tracks could be improved, and should, and is, to be used on any road 
which doesn't fall under any other classification and is intended, 
either in full, or partially for public use.  Highway=service for any 
road where it is not for public use, and the access is restrained by 
some access restrictions (preferable to be tagged separately) or because 
it's located in an area with access restrictions or private property.  
We should not consider it as being by definition in an agricultural or 
rural context.  For example: a highway that is intended for firefighting 
access in a publicly accessible part of a forest, where at the same time 
it is used for hiking by the public, will be a track.  The same highway 
at some part might enter a private part of the same forest, it is not 
accessible for the general public, so there yo split it and it becomes a 
highway=service.
Regardless if it is paved or not, the public factor is the 
distinguishing factor in these case, meaning, the functional classification.

Another example is that a publicly accessible track, unpaved, which 
might be paved over time, if the pure fact that it becomes paved without 
changing it's socio-economic character or functionality, remains a track.

Greetings,

Bert Araali

On 26/02/2021 19:13, Christoph Hormann wrote:
> On Thursday 25 February 2021, Bert -Araali- Van Opstal wrote:
>> The standard highway tagging is mainly based on the physical
>> appearance.  Not the functional or just partly the socio-economic
>> importance.
> The opposite is the case - standard highway tagging - with the exception
> of highway=motorway - is almost purely functional in OSM.  There are
> some exceptions from that in local practice (like distinction between
> highway=trunk and highway=primary in Germany for example).  But overall
> all of the main road classes are overwhelmingly used with a functional
> semantic delineation.  This is also something data users (both
> cartographic and routing) massively rely on.
>
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