On 23 January 2013 19:38, Rob Nickerson <rob.j.nicker...@gmail.com> wrote: > No extra "designation" tag is needed in my opinion. If they are on the > authorities list of streets, then they are legally exactly the same as any > other road. Therefore highway=unclassified would be fine. The issue arises > when they are not well maintained, narrow, or not suitable for some larger > vehicles. We really need some way of identifying this in a tag so that > routing engines can suggest an alternative route. I guess some people may > use highway=track to make a distinction, but I'm not convinced this is > right...
I would use the highway tag to record the physical condition/appearance of the highway in the case where it's not maintained to the standard one would expect from a normal road. So if it looks like a farm track, I would use highway=track; and if it looks like a service road, I'd use highway=service. To capture the legal status, I'd then add a suitable designation tag -- designation=unclassified_highway (assuming that is indeed the case). To capture the access rights (which data consumers may well not infer correctly from the designation tag) I'd also add an access=yes. (There may also be edge cases where one of these public highways is subject to a traffic regulation order which might ban motorised vehicles for all or some of the time. In which case it might be appropriate to add motor_vehicle=no or something like motor_vehicle:conditional=no @ Sep-Mar in addition to the general access=yes tag.) This way of doing the tagging is consistent with what is commonly already done with Public Rights of Way. The highway=* tag records the physical appearance of the way (footway, track, road, etc.), the designation=* tag gives the official status, and access tags can be used record the allowable users in a more standard manner. If you also want to record more detail about the condition / surface of the way, the tracktype=* and surface=* tags may also be useful (see the wiki for details). Robert. -- Robert Whittaker _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb