[Talk-GB] Tagging convention for unpassable roads

Andy Townsend ajt1047 at gmail.com
Fri Jul 2 09:03:55 UTC 2021


On 02/07/2021 09:26, Edward Bainton wrote:
> Hi all
>
> A note near me is from Amazon Logistics:
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2674954 
> <https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2674954>
>
> The road is unpassable for vehicles except 4x4, but legally has no 
> restrictions.
>
> User mundlk has tagged it "motorcar=no". I've suggested that should be 
> reverted and instead describe the road with other tags.
>
> Am I right? can anyone clarify the doctrine in these cases?
>

Yes.  "motorcar" is an access tag that that describes the legal right of 
access, not the practicality of that access.  Various tags exist 
(tracktype, smoothness, hazard tags etc.) to help a user of a particular 
vehicle decide whether it is appropriate for them.

That Amazon user has been very reactive to changeset comments (see 
http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=10205154 ) 
but unfortunately this user does seem to keep making the same mistakes 
over and over again - they appear to use motorcar=yes to mean "a 
delivery driver (ab)used by Amazon could access ..." and motorcar=no to 
mean "... could not access ...".

The benefit of Amazon's armchair** mapping to OSM in the UK is that many 
service roads and farm tracks that were previously unmapped do actually 
get mapped; the disadvantage is that they get mapped with extremely 
incomplete information.  However, they have added a note prompting you 
to investigate their change (and me, elsewhere, at 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2672130 ), so arguably that's "OSM 
working as intended".

As I understand it, Amazon's "somewhat rigid" working practices don't 
allow for the collection of more data in situ (and worse*) so we're a 
bit stuck.

Best Regards,

Andy

* see https://www.channel4.com/news/anger-at-amazon-working-conditions et al

** I suspect that this somewhat overstates the comfort of this 
employee's seating arrangements.





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