OpenStreetMap
During a walk I encountered a road in the forest that was tagged as highway:track. However it is paved full-width, by asphalt. Big enough for local traffic, smooth enough for race bikes.
I tagged the surface as asphalt. Or should the road type be tagged differently, and is ‘track’ not applicable to a road in the forest?
Discussion
Comentèro de aseerel4c26 lo 11 April 2015 a 00:19
what is the actual use on the “road”? – tag this … and the surface and smoothness independently (you could tag the width too). “asphalt” is fine for a “track”.
Comentèro de Ohr lo 11 April 2015 a 06:38
Tracks with asphalt are common in some regions. This is usually tagged with tracktype=grade1.
To me the difference to highway= unclassified is the use of the road: If it is mainly used for forestry traffic I would tag it as track but if is used as a normal road by other traffic I would rather use unclassified.
Comentèro de Diomas lo 11 April 2015 a 11:47
highway=rack is something that appears after few vehicles run over the same path. Think of it as highway=path for people - no one creates highway=path it just appears when hundreds of shoes hit the ground at the same place. Otherwise it’s a highway=footway (if someone created it)
So when a road is prepared in some way (it has some paving or cleaning from bushes or the ground is graded) it becomes unclassified.
Comentèro de jutezak lo 11 April 2015 a 22:47
It is upgraded for tourism in the forest I think, with a parking lot at the park entrance.
Comentèro de Alan Trick lo 12 April 2015 a 04:20
If it’s a road to a park then I think at least highway=unclassified would be normal.
In British Columbia, many of our roads (regardless of their use) go through forests, because there are forests all over the place.
Comentèro de jutezak lo 12 April 2015 a 07:11
The road/track itself isn’t used for car traffic, but at the edge of the forest is a parking. The road/track goed from there into the forest.
But I wonder how we can determine this in an objective way. People working in the forest will say ‘of course the primary function is forestry’ while tourists will say ‘oh yes, the occasional tractor every other week or so, but a hundred tourists every day’.
So - also because it looks like a road, and not like the track image in iD, I lean toward highway. But because I do not like edit wars I will leave it as is.
Comentèro de flohoff lo 12 April 2015 a 08:47
I have a simple rule. If there is any regular non agricultural traffic e.g. there is a residential building on that road then it CANT be a track. The traffic to and from residential buildings outweight the agricultural usage by an order of magnitude. You’ll have the Waste Lorries, Postman etc coming through that road.
If there is no such use and no public is allowed to use that road except for agricultural use then its a track.