[talk-au] highway=track update

[Josh Marshall]

>
> The approved OSM tag for surface=gravel
> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface> refers to railway
> ballast, not the fine crushed rock or natural surface that usually occurs
> on unpaved roads in Australia. However we call the fine unpaved surface
> "gravel" in common parlance, and many unpaved roads that don't constitute
> gravel as described in the OSM wiki have been tagged as gravel here,
> erroneously depending on your point of view.
>

This is a matter of interest to me too. I spend a substantial amount of
time running+riding on fire trails in NSW (all highway=track), and the
surface type is useful and indeed used in a number of the route planners I
use. I have changed a few roads back to 'unpaved' from 'gravel' due to the
rule of following the description in the surface= guidelines rather than
the name.

My question then however, is exactly what to tag the tracks beyond
"unpaved".

There are definitely sections that are somewhat regularly graded and appear
to have extra aggregate/fine gravel added. From the surface= wiki, these
most closely align with surface=compacted. But fine_gravel is potentially
an option too. Many of these are 2wd accessible when it is dry. (Typically
smoothness=bad.)

There are also others, usually less travelled, which are bare rock, clay,
dirt, sand, whatever was there. Is it best just to leave these as
surface=unpaved, and add a smoothness=very_bad or horrible tag? None of the
surface= tags really seem to apply.


On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 at 16:45, Little Maps <mapslittle at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Brian and co, in Victoria and southern NSW where I've edited a lot of
> roads, highway=track is nearly totally confined to dirt roads in forested
> areas, as described in the Aus tagging guidelines, viz: " highway=track
> Gravel fire trails, forest drives, 4WD trails and similar roads. Gravel
> roads connecting towns etc. should be tagged as appropriate (secondary,
> tertiary or unclassified), along with the surface=unpaved or more specific
> surface=* tag."
>
> In your US-chat someone wrote, "...in the USA, "most" roads that "most"
> people encounter (around here, in my experience, YMMV...) are
> surface=paved. Gravel or dirt roads are certainly found, but they are less
> and less common." By contrast, in regional Australia, most small roads are
> unpaved/dirt/gravel.
>
> In SE Australia, public roads in agricultural areas that are
> unpaved/dirt/gravel/etc are usually tagged as highway=unclassified (or
> tertiary etc), not highway=track. There are some exceptions in some small
> regions (for example in the Rutherglen area in NE Victoria) where really
> poor, rough 'double track' tracks on public road easements have
> systematically been tagged with highway=track rather than
> highway=unclassified. See here for example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/-36.1424/146.3683
> . However, this is not the norm in SE Australia and across the border in
> southern NSW, this type of road is nearly always tagged as unclassified, as
> it is elsewhere in Victoria. In SE Australia, my experience is that tracks
> are tagged in the more traditional way, and not as has been done in the
> USA.
>
> If I could ask you a related question, what do you US mappers call
> "gravel"? The approved OSM tag for surface=gravel
> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface> refers to railway
> ballast, not the fine crushed rock or natural surface that usually occurs
> on unpaved roads in Australia. However we call the fine unpaved surface
> "gravel" in common parlance, and many unpaved roads that don't constitute
> gravel as described in the OSM wiki have been tagged as gravel here,
> erroneously depending on your point of view. How do you use the
> surface=gravel tag in the USA? Cheers Ian
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 2:49 PM Brian M. Sperlongano <zelonewolf at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> Recently, there was a discussion on the talk-us list regarding how we use
>> the tag highway=track.  That discussion begins here:
>>
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2021-February/020878.html
>>
>> During that discussion, someone suggested that Australian mappers may
>> also be using the highway=track tag in a similar way to US mappers.  Hence
>> this message :)
>>
>> I've recently made edits to the wiki page for highway=track describing
>> how the tag is used in the USA:
>>
>>
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dtrack#Usage_in_the_United_States
>>
>> If there is similarly a local variation in how this tag is used, I would
>> encourage the Australian community to document their usage as well.
>>
>> Brian Sperlongano
>> Rhode Island, USA
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