[OSM-talk] rural highway tagging: residential or track

[Greg Troxel]

  I have frequently a tagging dilemma. See this example: Coburn Rd on this
  location: http://osm.org/go/ZfR@yOeG-- (N of US 2). It was tagged as
  residential, but I've been there two days ago and it's a decent "compacted
  gravel" road, almost 2-car wide primarily for agricultural use, although it
  does connect farms, and probably can be even be used as through-road (to get
  from one highway to another). Category residential seemed to me to be
  primarily for urban setting. So, the best I thought for this one would be
  "track". But this is rendered almost like a path (the dashed line). What are
  your thoughts?

As John said, consider highway=unclassified.

If it's a 'real road', it shouldn't be track.

The fact that people *use* it for agricultural access doesn't make it a track.

If it's both

  a legal right of way (public way, or "private way") *

  reasonably passable by normal passenger cars

then it's residential or unclassified, especially if it is reasonable to
use it to get from here to there as a connecting road.

track is more towards "you better have 4WD" and "you ought to have a
reason to be using this" although these aren't hard rules.


* meaning: does the government consider this a road, or a place you can
  drive "off road".  The presence of any of speed limit signs,
  maintenance by county highway dept, government snow plowing would mean
  the government thinks it is a road.
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