[OSM-talk] Road Widths, Stubs and Priority/Giveway - Off topic

[Ben Robbins]

>What would you use for a single-track lane with passing places,
>lanes=1, and separate ways for the passing-places, or.. ?

Usually, the smallest of roads are 'tricky passing', but actually if you in 
enough of a hurry you don't have to stop and wait, but can drive half off 
the road, or force the other driver off the road.   In the few places where 
walls/banks/hedges comes up to the road edge, then passing places have been 
created every 100 yards or so.  Personally I wouldn't tag each one, but If i 
did i would either tag a node or make it similar to a small layby.   Because 
they are so close, usually it would be a waste of time to request the gps 
device to take you to one, becuase you would have spotted one already, 
either that, or the other car would become so bored of waiting for you to 
check your gps that it would have reversed.

>Condititon is one of those things that can change widely over a year
>depending on weather, acts of God etc. I'd think it much better to not
>include this.

It can be averaged.  If it reappears every year, but is so softcore that the 
weather disposes of it, then I would tag it grade5.    Roads may change over 
the year as snow falls on them, and they are nolonger a road (pennines).    
For the more hardcore tracks this isnt really true.   I have had grade5 
(wich is just grass tracks), tagged since late last winter, and they are 
still there.  Although the grass grew back in the late summer, the area was 
left clear for access, and the clear indentation in the ground remained.  It 
is also a footpath.  If the track wasnt there, then 5 or 6 fields would have 
no access, so its definatly there.

Conditions change widely over a year on all surfaces not just tracks.  Roads 
in the Pennines (England, UK) can be covered in snow, and therefore are not 
a road, but just snow...but underneeth the snow is still a road, wich 
reemerges when the snow thaws.  Therefore the anual average use of the way 
is a highway=unclassified road, or whatever!

Finally on this line of throught, For events such as the silverstone 
grandprix, there are marked grass tracks, that have no indentation, but a 
marked out and used by traffic, but are just grass.  These go around the 
carparking fields.  If a track is just sand over a desert and is nothing 
more than sand, if traffic semi freqently passes down a similar line, then 
it would seem ok to call it a track of somesort.  In this case the track is 
there because of humans memory, rather than a scar in the land, but none the 
less its a track.

That's all I'm gunna say on tracktypes I think.  Please check back over the 
fasinating debate sometime in mid decemeber, when all this was covered.  
After using this tag in all 4 seasons I have come to the opion that I have 
stated above.  Its been tested!

Ben

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