[talk-au] When does a road become a track?

[Ian Wills]

I am often mildly amused, though sometimes dismayed, by the way threads on
this list head off at strange tangents. This is another and the kind of
reaction one gets makes me wonder whether it is worth the effort to
contribute.

Just to make things clear: I noted in my original contribution that the
Australian Standard definition of a road from AS 1348—2002 "Road and traffic
engineering—Glossary of terms" is " road: Route trafficable by motor
vehicles; in law, the public right-of-way between boundaries of adjoining
property".

Surely there can be no arguing over this. I thought that in this list we
were dealing with what is appropriate for Australia. This is the official,
Australian Standard and you will note, "in law", definition of a road in
Australia. It is the definition that people like engineers and the
government departments that build and maintain roads use.

What is in contention is how to tag what OSM calls "highways" that do not
fit this definition. Clearly they cannot, without causing ambiguity and
confusion, be tagged as highway=road in Australia.

Can we please have some rational discussion on that, directed towards
guiding those of us who do tag things that are not within the Australian
Standard definition for roads.

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Liz <edodd at billiau.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Oct 2009, John Smith wrote:
> > Most people aren't taught to drive or grow up on dirt roads, I only
> > have a 2wd car and I'll drive it on roads some/most people wouldn't,
> > so that's a bit too subjective...
> and we have enough trouble with furriners trying to drive commodores on
> unsuitable roads without encouraging them by mapping roads as
> highway=something when for them it should be track.
>
>
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