I am very happy to see this rekindled interest in TIGER cleanup! Having done a fair amount of backcountry exploring, I know that there is a wide range of road grades and aerial imagery alone is not enough to decide how navigable a roads is for a particular type of vehicle. Or, for that matter, what its access limitations are. I do agree with Clifford that leaving them as poorly aligned 'residential' roads is the worst possible situation. Yes, worse than deleting the road altogether. What I usually do is mark the road as track without a track grade tag. This seems to me to be the most acceptable generic solution for a remote mapper: acknowledging that something that could potentially be navigated by a 4 wheeled vehicle exists, without being more specific. Local knowledge can then come to the rescue to upgrade to unclassified if appropriate.
Another note on the MapRoulette side of things: I would very much appreciate your feedback on the new MapRoulette version Clifford linked to. Just email me, join #maproulette on slack, or file an issue at https://github.com/maproulette/maproulette3/issues. Martijn On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 3:08 PM, Kevin Kenny <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 12:55 PM, Kevin Broderick <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Please, please, please don't convert rural roads to tracks based on >> imagery alone unless it's incredibly clear (and that would exclude anything >> with forest cover). >> >> While many of them should definitely be unclassified, not residential, >> downgrading the main rural routes to tracks doesn't match local usage nor >> the functional topology of the road network in such places. There are a lot >> of USFS and BLM roads around here that are the only way to access >> significant areas, that commonly see normal passenger-car traffic and that >> can be traveled at reasonable speed in a sedan (or at 30+ MPH with a little >> ground clearance and driving skill),. Having these differentiated from true >> tracks (where even a stock 4x4 is likely going to be operating at 15 MPH or >> less) is incredibly helpful for routing and visual use of the map, and it's >> a lot easier to recognize what I'd call "areas of questionable data" when >> they haven't been aggressively armchair-mapped. Also, the smoothness key is >> really helpful for tracks and impossible to map from orthoimagery. >> >> > Yes, yes, yes. > > In the rural areas that I can travel to readily, TIGER is downright > hallucinatory (and there are few enough mappers that cleanup has been > agonizingly slow). TIGER has roads in places where no road is, ever was, or > even ever could be. (I've seen one going up a series of cliffs totalling > about 2000 feet of ascent!) But even in 'leaves down' images, it's nearly > impossible to see the forest roads, much less trace them, and there is > definitely a wide variation in quality. Some of them are well-compacted > sand and shale, that once they've been rolled in the spring, support > driving at 30+ MPH. Others, I wouldn't bring my Subaru on. (Although I've > been on a few of those in the ancient Ford Explorrer that the Subaru > replaced.) Some are gated, some, you simply have to decide for yourself > that they're not drivable. > > The 'dirt roads' range from 'highway=path abandoned:highway=track > smoothness=impassable' to 'highway=tertiary surface=compacted > smoothness=intermediate', with no way for an armchair mapper to tell among > them. > > The old road maps that they used to give out at gas stations had, on many > of these roads, "inquire locally for conditions," which is still good > advice. The signage may say, "LIMITED PURPOSE SEASONAL-USE ROAD: No > maintenance November 1-April 15" - but in practice, they'll keep it open > later in the Autumn unless the snow comes early, and when they open it in > the spring depends on when the crews can get it clear - it could be weeks > late if there's been a bad washout or rock slide. There's absolutely no way > to tag and encode that sort of thing. Inquire locally for conditions. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > >
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