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

[James Umbanhowar]

I grew up in an area with these kinds of roads and I don't think
they're technically compacted.  The gravel, which is crushed
limerstone, is laid down and due to its chemical properties creates a
smooth surface after several months of traffic.

I've used surface=gravel; gravel=crushed_limestone in my area.  I don't
get the gravel being 4-8 cm, that seems a wikierror.

James

On Wed, 2018-04-18 at 17:19 -0500, Toby Murray wrote:
> 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=phot
> o
> 
> 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=phot
> o
> 
> 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
> 
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