[Talk-us] Usage of highway=track in the United States

[Tod Fitch]

tl;dr - I hope that a general purpose router will not route over a way tagged as “highway=track”. None of those in my area are suitable and/or legal for use in a standard motor vehicle.

Long version - In my little part of the world, tracks are most often for either farm/ranch access. Or they were when they were created. If they are still being used for farm/ranch access they are almost certainly “access=private”.

There are a number of local “wilderness parks” owned and managed by the county that were once private ranch land. Many of the tracks in those areas have been re-purposed for hiking, mountain biking and equestrian use. In this case, they might be maintained enough for the agency managing the park (or emergency responders) to access with four wheel drive pickup trucks. I can’t think of any of them that allow public motor vehicle access though. For what it is worth, I map these as something like:

highway=track
surface=unpaved
motor_vehicle=no
horse=yes
bicycle=yes
foot=yes
dogs=leashed | no

With the various *=yes tags based on local signage, etc.

I am not an off-highway vehicle person so the track type rating is something I am not comfortable tagging, and since most of these do not allow motor vehicles I guess that is moot.

In any case, my presumption is that if it is a track then it is very likely not available for public motor vehicle use.

If the track has not been maintained well enough for a motor vehicle then I will change the above tagging to be “highway=path” (they are multipurpose). And, on rare occasions, will also add “abandoned:highway=track” in addition to the current “highway=path”. Generally, I only use the lifecycle tagging if there is an isolated section of the way that hasn’t been overgrown into being a narrow trail. This is mostly to avoid armchair mappers “upgrading” it to a track based on aerial imagery.

There are exceptions to tracks being private or restricted on vehicle access: The US Forest Service has a number of “roads” that are, on the ground, indistinguishable from a private farm or ranch track in width, condition, etc. These are open to motor vehicles with sufficient ground clearance. They are almost certainly signed on the ground and shown on the public domain Forest Service recreation maps. There are also unpaved roads in the desert or in the mountains which are passible with a normal passenger vehicle, these are wider and generally graded periodically. I tag those as either “highway=service” or “highway=unclassified” as seems appropriate when I survey the area.

Cheers!

> On Feb 19, 2021, at 4:30 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 2/20/21 00:56, Brian M. Sperlongano wrote:
>> US mappers: how do you apply highway=track in the US?
> 
> If I may add a question: If you use highway=track what kind of access do
> you think is implied? Would it generally be safe to assume that I can
> drive along a highway=track with my Jeep if highway=track is all that
> OpenStreetMap tells me, or should I look for an explicit access=yes or
> motor_vehicle=yes before I do?
> 
> Asking with DWG work in mind, where we often get complaints like "your
> map shows a private track trough my property pls delete immediately or
> else". Then we usually offer to add access=private. But sometimes I
> wonder, is it perhaps more likely for a random highway=track to be
> private? Should that maybe even be the default?
> 
> Bye
> Frederik
> 
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
> 
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