[OSM-talk] Unknown road classifications

[Alex Mauer]

Steve Hill wrote:

> tag is used for lots of non-road things, highway=unknown could be 
> talking about any kind of highway, such as a footway. Quite a lot of 
> the time you know it is a road because you drove down it, but you don't 
> necessarily know what class of road it is.

Hmm, I would think that if you're marking it as unknown, you already 
know it's not a footway (footway is a rather lowest-common-denominator 
value as pedestrians can go just about anywhere)

IMO if it's sufficiently unknown that it will have to be revisited 
anyway for more accurate classification, marking it as a road rather 
than a complete unknown isn't really going to be helpful to anyone.

I don't think it's a good idea for the highway tag to be used for so 
many non-road things -- but that's probably a discussion for another time.

-Alex Mauer "hawke"