[talk-au] highway=track update

Josh Marshall josh.p.marshall at gmail.com
Thu Mar 4 09:37:39 UTC 2021


I do long runs through state forest and national park pretty much every
fortnight. I’ll start a collection and post them up in a few weeks. What’s
the best place to put them so they’re somewhat permanent?... and that
raises the question; do we start a proposal page according to [0] or take
it to the tagging mailing list first?

[0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal_process

On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 7:57 pm, Sebastian S. <mapping at consebt.de> wrote:

> Would you happen to have some photos of such unpaved roads?
>
> In my opinion we should consider adding a new surface tag if we feel we
> need one and can describe the surface sufficiently.
>
> All this would start with some photos and a discussion in my opinion.
> Hence the question.
>
> Cheers,
> Seb
>
>
>
> On 23 February 2021 5:22:43 pm AEDT, Josh Marshall <
> josh.p.marshall at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 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
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Talk-au mailing list
>>>> Talk-au at openstreetmap.org
>>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Talk-au mailing list
>>> Talk-au at openstreetmap.org
>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
>>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/attachments/20210304/dab8d1f6/attachment-0001.htm>


More information about the Talk-au mailing list