[Tagging] Proposed rewrite Of highway=track wiki page

[Bert -Araali- Van Opstal]

It is for sure, so is forestry. And I agree fully that this "defintion" 
is misleading.
Track has a major place in it.
So after elimination as I described the actual socio-economic 
classification contains the following classes:
Trunk (or strategic)
Primary (or strategic)
Secondary (or collector)
Tertiary (or feeder)
Residential (local for residential, or mix of 
residential/commercial/industrial)
Unclassified (local, but specific for commercial/industrial - changed 
this after Zeke's clarification) - in Africa more broadly used also for 
any road that can't or isn't clearly identifiable as feeder, collector 
or strategic road.
Service (serves a more specific service and not intended for general 
public use).
Track (everything remaining that doesn't fit in the above, so for sure 
agriculture, forestry but also natural parks etc...).

Track is the term in this classification used to fill the gap. And here 
I see the biggest problem, as "unclassified" at least in Africa, is in 
the first place used to fill that gap but I also sense some confusion in 
other parts of the world.
So we have some job to do there, avoid the confusion between track vs 
unclassified.
Maybe we did it wrong from the beginning, but i suggest we first 
concentrate on a good definition for track, in the socio-economic 
classification as the basis and socio-economic considerations as the 
first and most significant.

So maybe this is better:
Tracks are all transport routes that are not assigned to one of the 
other "socio-economic highway classes". As such it is an important 
socio-economic class by itself, filling the void.

I think it's important we avoid trying to define what exactly, either 
social or economic or socio-economic combination should be applicable 
for track. It's not wrong to name forestry and agriculture but we 
already experienced how that in many cases let's people misinterpret it 
as being for agriculture and forestry only.  You add f.i. natural parks 
then they will tend to say oh it's only for those three...
It is the "filler" term for a gap that will always be there, the base.

Notice that I purposely propose not to use the term "road" in the 
definition, neither in any of the other socio-economic classes because 
it causes another major confusion. Many tracks are created by animals, 
large animals create tracks in the natural environment, but also in the 
agricultural economy. These tracks are in many cases also used by humans.
Road is broadly a term used and in peoples minds in the context of human 
transport only. Introducing the "human" factor specifically in the 
definitions in the top-level highway definitions, both socio-economic or 
throughput or management will always lead to confusion, undermining the 
use of track as a base and as a very suitable term to fill the gap in 
the socio-economic and throughput classification.

After we agree on that we still have some work to do, in my minds and in 
this concept, I still have issues with "unclassified" and or "road". But 
it's better to focus first on a good definition for track as in line 
with Zeke's proposal, which in my honest opinion is very close already 
and of superb quality.

Greetings,

Bert Araali

On 09/03/2021 08:43, Marc_marc wrote:
> Le 09.03.21 à 00:06, Bert -Araali- Van Opstal a écrit :
>> Remains, what are tracks: all roads that have no specific
>> socio-economic purpose
> agriculture isn't a specific socio-economic purpose ?
> without it, everything else collapses
>
>
>
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