[Talk-GB] Unclassified Country Road (UCR)

[Robert Whittaker (OSM)]

On 31 May 2012 17:10, Rob Nickerson <rob.j.nickerson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now that the Public Right of Way documentation [1] has settled down a bit, I
> have had a chance to pick up some of the other comments received in the last
> few weeks. One of which was on Unclassified Country Roads (UCR).

Whether the term is obsolete or not, there are certainly roads that
appear on a Council's "List of Streets Maintainable at the Public
Expense" which are not classified as primary, secondary or tertiary.
It would seem natural to term these "Unclassified". We already have
the OSM tagging highway=unclassified which will work for most of
these.

However, I think highway=unclassified brings with it the implicit
assumption that the route will be suitable for motor traffic, and (in
the UK at least) will have a metalled surface. This is not true of all
these Unclassified Highways in the UK, some of which will have the
appearance of dirt farm tracks. In the spirit of duck tagging, I would
suggest that even if these roads are technically Unclassified
Highways, we tag them with highway=track if that's what they most
resemble. This should also help routing software avoid using such ways
for motor traffic, even if it's technically legal.

Nevertheless, such routes will generally include a public right of way
(probably full vehicular rights) and I believe it's important to tag
this fact. Given that we use the designation tag to classify other
rights of way, I would suggest continuing to do so here. My preference
would be for designation=unclassified_highway as it seems to be the
simplest statement of the status. Whatever we decide on, I'd strongly
suggest and that for consistency we use a single tag value on all such
ways regardless of what the individual council happens to call them.
(Of course, I would only suggest using this designation tag at all on
ways that aren't already tagged with highway=unclassified.)

As with any public right of way, I'd also suggest adding appropriate
access=* tags to help data users make the right decisions in routing
algorithms. (Sometimes these access tags will be crucial since Traffic
Regulation Orders can restrict some classes of traffic that would
normally be permitted on a particular public right of way.)

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker