I recently bought a gravel bicycle to ride on the many gravel roads in Kansas. Like this one: https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=nYO4JI46L0SWzNAQlLT4kA&focus=photo
First question: What would you call this road? Obviously I am calling it a "gravel road" but a couple of people have said they would call it a "dirt road" so I'm curious if there are any other common terms to describe this type of road in different regions of the US. Second question: How would you tag this road? There is a surface=gravel tag that is in pretty common usage in Kansas and neighboring states. However looking at the wiki page for the surface tag[1], this is not wiki-correct. According to that page surface=gravel is to be used for large rocks (4-8cm) that are laid down loosely like those typically used as ballast on railroad beds. I believe The Mapillary picture I linked to would be considered surface=compacted according to the wiki because the rocks are much smaller and the surface is stabilized with a binding agent. There is a big difference between the two when it comes to bicycle riding. Railroad ballast is bone jarring and flat tire inducing whereas gravel roads are pretty manageable on the right kind of bike. But If you call something a "gravel road" and there is a "gravel" option in the editor preset for the surface tag, people are going to choose the gravel option and not look for "compacted" since that is not a common term here. I assume it is a more common term in the UK and that is why it is used in OSM. And lastly there are trails that are surfaced with a similar material but crushed to a smaller size like here: https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=iQNqP-dfQ-Rm6AD9REMsgQ&focus=photo I'm trying to decide if that is better as surface=compacted or surface=fine_gravel although fine_gravel seems to be a slightly different process from what I see on the wiki. Maybe this should be directed at the tagging list but I thought I would get thoughts from the US community since we seem to be the ones using the tag incorrectly (according to the wiki) [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface Toby _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
