I don't map much in the US but do in Australia and Sweden. In both
countries, I have rarely come across what I consider to be gravel roads,
instead consider most unpaved roads and tracks to be 'dirt' or 'compacted':
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:surface%3Dcompacted
Apropos the current discussion, I wonder what other mappers think?
Especially if you have any road engineering background in Australia. I'd
like to fall in with a consensus.
Background: I mostly look at tracks/roads as a cyclist. If my tyre is
mostly resting on small stones of various sizes, then it is gravel and
riding is generally tough with tendency to skitter. If my tyre is
resting mostly on (often rollered) dirt with usually embedded very small
stones for cohesion and traction, then I am on a compacted surface and
riding is much easier. Here in Sweden, almost all unpaved public and
residential roads are the latter as are many logging and farm tracks. A
half-decent compacted surface can often be car driven at 70 kmph, not
something I'd fancy on a gravel road.
I could have sworn there was a good Wikipedia page on compacted road
surfaces but I cannot find it now or anything similar, perhaps called
something else. It is a deliberate technique that goes back to Roman
times, (perhaps there are some in Waga Waga :-) ).
Mike
On 2021-02-23 07:22, Josh Marshall wrote:
The approved OSM tag for surface=gravel
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface> refers to
railway ballast, not the fine crushed rock or natural surface that
usually occurs on unpaved roads in Australia. However we call the
fine unpaved surface "gravel" in common parlance, and many unpaved
roads that don't constitute gravel as described in the OSM wiki
have been tagged as gravel here, erroneously depending on your
point of view.
This is a matter of interest to me too. I spend a substantial amount
of time running+riding on fire trails in NSW (all highway=track), and
the surface type is useful and indeed used in a number of the route
planners I use. I have changed a few roads back to 'unpaved' from
'gravel' due to the rule of following the description in the surface=
guidelines rather than the name.
My question then however, is exactly what to tag the tracks beyond
"unpaved".
There are definitely sections that are somewhat regularly graded and
appear to have extra aggregate/fine gravel added. From the surface=
wiki, these most closely align with surface=compacted. But fine_gravel
is potentially an option too. Many of these are 2wd accessible when it
is dry. (Typically smoothness=bad.)
There are also others, usually less travelled, which are bare rock,
clay, dirt, sand, whatever was there. Is it best just to leave these
as surface=unpaved, and add a smoothness=very_bad or horrible tag?
None of the surface= tags really seem to apply.
On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 at 16:45, Little Maps <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Brian and co, in Victoria and southern NSW where I've edited a
lot of roads, highway=track is nearly totally confined to dirt
roads in forested areas, as described in the Aus tagging
guidelines, viz: " highway=track Gravel fire trails, forest
drives, 4WD trails and similar roads. Gravel roads connecting
towns etc. should be tagged as appropriate (secondary, tertiary or
unclassified), along with the surface=unpaved or more specific
surface=* tag."
In your US-chat someone wrote, "...in the USA, "most" roads that
"most" people encounter (around here, in my experience, YMMV...)
are surface=paved. Gravel or dirt roads are certainly found, but
they are less and less common." By contrast, in regional
Australia, most small roads are unpaved/dirt/gravel.
In SE Australia, public roads in agricultural areas that are
unpaved/dirt/gravel/etc are usually tagged as highway=unclassified
(or tertiary etc), not highway=track. There are some exceptions in
some small regions (for example in the Rutherglen area in NE
Victoria) where really poor, rough 'double track' tracks on public
road easements have systematically been tagged with highway=track
rather than highway=unclassified. See here for example:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/-36.1424/146.3683
<https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/-36.1424/146.3683>.
However, this is not the norm in SE Australia and across the
border in southern NSW, this type of road is nearly always tagged
as unclassified, as it is elsewhere in Victoria. In SE Australia,
my experience is that tracks are tagged in the more traditional
way, and not as has been done in the USA.
If I could ask you a related question, what do you US mappers call
"gravel"? The approved OSM tag for surface=gravel
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface> refers to
railway ballast, not the fine crushed rock or natural surface that
usually occurs on unpaved roads in Australia. However we call the
fine unpaved surface "gravel" in common parlance, and many unpaved
roads that don't constitute gravel as described in the OSM wiki
have been tagged as gravel here, erroneously depending on your
point of view. How do you use the surface=gravel tag in the USA?
Cheers Ian
On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 2:49 PM Brian M. Sperlongano
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hello all,
Recently, there was a discussion on the talk-us list regarding
how we use the tag highway=track. That discussion begins here:
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2021-February/020878.html
<https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2021-February/020878.html>
During that discussion, someone suggested that Australian
mappers may also be using the highway=track tag in a similar
way to US mappers. Hence this message :)
I've recently made edits to the wiki page for highway=track
describing how the tag is used in the USA:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dtrack#Usage_in_the_United_States
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dtrack#Usage_in_the_United_States>
If there is similarly a local variation in how this tag is
used, I would encourage the Australian community to document
their usage as well.
Brian Sperlongano
Rhode Island, USA
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