[Talk-us] Usage of =?utf-8?Q?highway=3Dtrack_?=in the United States

[Richard Fairhurst]

Kevin Kenny wrote:
> Routers tend to get it right, since most of their algorithms
> disfavor service roads and penalize tracks severely. Essentially,
> you'll get routed over either only if they go to your destination.

That's a rather car-centric attitude!

Having useful data for highway=track would be really helpful in bike routing, particularly for those of us who ride steel rather than carbon fibre! There's a burgeoning industry of "gravel/adventure" bikes for people who enjoy off-road riding but without all the technical malarkey associated with MTBs.

As it stands, for cycle.travel's routing, I ignore highway=track in the US by default unless there's another useful signifier - a surface tag, a route relation, or similar. Contrast that to mainland Europe, where cycle.travel will happily route over highway=track because the data is much more reliable.

Richard
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