[Talk-us] Gravel roads and surface tags in the US

[Toby Murray]

I recently bought a gravel bicycle to ride on the many gravel roads in
Kansas. Like this one:
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=nYO4JI46L0SWzNAQlLT4kA&focus=photo

First question: What would you call this road? Obviously I am calling
it a "gravel road" but a couple of people have said they would call it
a "dirt road" so I'm curious if there are any other common terms to
describe this type of road in different regions of the US.

Second question: How would you tag this road? There is a
surface=gravel tag that is in pretty common usage in Kansas and
neighboring states. However looking at the wiki page for the surface
tag[1], this is not wiki-correct. According to that page
surface=gravel is to be used for large rocks (4-8cm) that are laid
down loosely like those typically used as ballast on railroad beds. I
believe The Mapillary picture I linked to would be considered
surface=compacted according to the wiki because the rocks are much
smaller and the surface is stabilized with a binding agent. There is a
big difference between the two when it comes to bicycle riding.
Railroad ballast is bone jarring and flat tire inducing whereas gravel
roads are pretty manageable on the right kind of bike.

But If you call something a "gravel road" and there is a "gravel"
option in the editor preset for the surface tag, people are going to
choose the gravel option and not look for "compacted" since that is
not a common term here. I assume it is a more common term in the UK
and that is why it is used in OSM.

And lastly there are trails that are surfaced with a similar material
but crushed to a smaller size like here:
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=iQNqP-dfQ-Rm6AD9REMsgQ&focus=photo

I'm trying to decide if that is better as surface=compacted or
surface=fine_gravel although fine_gravel seems to be a slightly
different process from what I see on the wiki.

Maybe this should be directed at the tagging list but I thought I
would get thoughts from the US community since we seem to be the ones
using the tag incorrectly (according to the wiki)

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface

Toby