[talk-au] Tracks flagged as missing from government data

[Mateusz Konieczny]

Aug 23, 2021, 06:24 by talk-au at openstreetmap.org:

> On Sun, 22 Aug 2021, at 5:39 PM, Little Maps wrote:
>
>> I have a different take, but I think you'd be happy with my ideal router. It would give me 2 options: (1) use all available tracks (public + unknown) vs (2) only use known public tracks. Given how few tracks have an access tag, most users would default to "show me all of them", but they'd have a choice. Globally, only 3.8% of tracks have an access tag: 20.7 million of 21.5 million tracks don't. Any app that only used known public tracks would be viewed as crippled by users and would go broke. The market would force developers to show all tracks, regardless of their personal intentions.
>>
>
> I don't think there is any perfect solution until all tracks have an access tag, only compromises. You could decide to route on tracks including without an access tag set, with a warning or just accept there will be some bad routes and encourage users to report or fix those in OSM. 
>
Other options (theoretical)
1) apply some penalty to tracks with unknown access so a bit longer route will be 
preferred if known to be accessible
2) find route in both modes - "assume yes" and "assume no" and present both to the user

>> By analogy, until recently the Aus community took the view that there was no need to add paved surface tags on roads and only unpaved tags needed to be added. Paved was taken as the default value. As lots of roads had no tags it was impossible to know which were actually paved and which just hadn't been tagged. Same problem to here. Fortunately, heaps of mappers added paved tags anyway, which enabled us to get to the stage this year where virtually every road down to tertiary level across the whole country now has a surface tag (except in Melb and Perth). Soon every unclassified road in Vic will have one as well. Keep chipping away at the job is my suggestion.
>>
>
> Exactly, and overall I think OSM data is in a much better place because of this.
>
See also maxweight:signed, opening_hours:signed, cycleway:both=no 
and explicit access tagging on playgrounds (this ones promoted by SC)

> I've tried to get StreetComplete to ask about access but it was rejected > https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/2930
>
note that it was rejected because
1) access is at least sometimes unsigned and not clear - is it different in Australia?
Is it possible to have a simple question where someone with zero experience 
would reliably answer?

Are there also tracks open to public entry on foot/bicycle and not in other vehicle?
It also would need to be handled - or request user to leave notes for tracks not fully
open and not fully closed if that is rare

(In Poland it would be unlikely due to tricky situation with vehicle/foot/bicycle access
that is very hard to survey and interpret)

2) Problem of spammy quest is real (in some areas many, many, many will be public)
but there are some spammy quests already and given high usefulness it seems survivable

3) no community was known to want explicit access tagging on all highway=track
(from this discussion I see that it can change)
In such case posting comment in that issue to outcome of discussion (probably 
documentation on OSM Wiki) that explicit access tagging is desired on every
single highway=track in entire country would defuse that argument

(Or maybe it could be asked on access=unknown tracks?)

No promises that it would be implemented but "Australian community clearly
agrees that explicit access tagging on all tracks is desired" would defuse
one of blockers.

Especially if there are good reasons to do it this way it would encourage doing this.

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(as one of contributors to StreetComplete I strongly prefer avoiding  going 
"hereby I declare tagging decision, rest of OSM community now should
change their mapping, change other presets and update wiki, the king of tagging
has spoken"

it is tricky to distinguish sometimes "this is my pet tagging style that noone likes" vs
"this is an accepted tagging style, with tiny loud minority complaining" or
"this is new accepted mapping style" vs "this is a bad idea not supported by community"

and in case of highway=track I was unaware about any real support for access tagging on 
every single one - and none was linked in the discussion)
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