[Tagging] Highway classification in Antarctica

[Fernando Trebien]

On Fri, 26 Apr 2024 at 20:09, Juan Pablo Tolosa Sanzana
<jptolosanzana at outlook.cl> wrote:
> There are also several places like Tristan da Cunha with only highway=unclassified/residential.
> Reading associated definitions the unclassified value seems to be the best fit for King George Island.

Perhaps a key difference is that Tristan da Cunha only has one
continuous settlement. But it is also possible that the roads there
are not yet classified in the best possible way. We should also read
the definition of highway=tertiary and apply it for Tristan da Cunha
and Fildes where it says:

"Outside urban areas, tertiary roads are those with low to moderate
traffic which link smaller settlements such as villages or hamlets."
"Within larger urban settlements such as large towns or cities,
tertiary roads link local centres of activity such as shops, schools,
or suburbs."

Strava heat maps seem to agree with the University of Oregon [1] that
some ways in Tristan da Cunha might function in such a way as to
result in a slightly higher classification. In the urban area, those
ways go through the main hospital, the main post office, the main
port, the main school, the main church and the main museum. Outside of
it, they go to the main farmlands of the island.

The Fildes Peninsula has four settlements relative to year-round
stations: Villa las Estrellas (place=village), Bellingshausen Station
(place=hamlet), Great Wall Station (place=hamlet) and Artigas Base
(place=hamlet). One may question whether these are hamlets since the
population is not permanent (except maybe some people at Villa Las
Estrellas), which is why I brought up that point several times in this
discussion before. Except for a few changes, most were imported as
hamlets from the Antarctic Digital Database data source in 2013.

The main ways connecting those hamlets in Fildes also go through two
hospitals, two churches, one library, one airport, one port, and one
hostel that operated from 1980 to 2019 (may be only temporarily
closed).

> Probably King George Island operates more like a private area.

Should those ways receive an access=* tag with a value different from
access=yes? If a tourist boat docked there, would tourists be stopped
from wandering around by local authorities? It seems that tourism
operators need a permit, but tourists do not.[2]

[1] https://volcano.oregonstate.edu/tristan-da-cunha
[2] https://adventuresmithexplorations.com/cruises/antarctica/travel-guide/how-to-get-there/

--
Fernando Trebien