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

[Jack Burke]

Keep in mind that OSM apparently uses "compacted" to refer to macadamized roads, which is a specific process for building roads. 

Maybe they wiki should be updated to say that roads with loose pieces of gravel scattered around but a hardened underlying surface is compacted, not gravel?

-jack

-- 
Typos courtesy of fancy auto spell technology

On April 19, 2018 9:22:15 AM EDT, James Umbanhowar <jumbanho at gmail.com> wrote:
>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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