“Despise” is an emotional word, and I may have been a bit too cynical in my previous posts, but yes, I doubt the usefulness of the tag (especially with this confusion appearing here) and I’m not very motivated to use it.
My assumption of what tracktype tries to map is also influenced by the quest on StreetComplete (asking “What’s the surface firmness of this track?”) and the description of the key values in the iD preset (Solid: paved/Mostly Solid: gravel/rock with some soft material mixed in/Even mixture of hard and soft materials/Mostly Soft: soil/sand/grass with some hard material mixed in/Soft: soil/sand/grass) that both focus very much on the properties of the track surface.
What’s the tracktype? I would say that the surface is obviously very soft, so tracktype=grade5, and I guess most users of SC and iD will tag the same. But the track has been carved into the hillside, so quite some development work has been done to make it. Does that make it tracktype=grade2? Seems like the majority of posters in this thread would tag it like that. But then if there is such a large difference in tagging practice, what does tracktype=gradex tell the map user?
tracktype is useful, not because it provides additional information that couldn’t be recorded with surface and smoothness, but because it provides a rough way for mappers to classify tracks when they are unable to record the surface and smoothness in detail. highway=track + smoothness=very_bad + surface=dirt gives a lot of good information about what to expect, but this tagging may only be a good representation of one small section. There may be sections of mixed dirt and rocks, mud, grass, sand, gravel, etc, etc. The smoothness also may change over the course of the track and over time with the seasons. For many tracks through wild places mappers are just not willing to collect all this information from ground survey. Instead they will tag surface=unpaved (as that general value covers all of the above) and then based on the variety conditions they experienced, they can choose a tracktype value as a general estimate of how “good” of a track this is. This is absolutely subjective, but still useful.
If I see highway=track + tracktype=grade5 (with no other tags) I know not to assume too much about this track. I can guess that attempting to drive a normal passenger car down this track could be a serious adventure and could be highly inadvisable. On the other hand if it’s tagged grade1, I can expect that it will likely be just fine for a passenger car. highway=track + surface=* + smoothness (and no tracktype=*) would definitely give me more information, but I’ll take highway=track + tracktype=* over a plain highway=track any day.
When a track along a slope is needed it is obligatory to carve the slope. This has been done in that place but no development of the track itself. It is bare ground, no gravel added for stabilization, no compaction, not even holes/bumps levelled. According to the description given above such track qualifies for:
In dry times such a track will be hard as stone, in wet times soft as a bog. The surface hardness of undeveloped tracks varies from season to season and that is why it is not useful for any classification.
Developing this track by improving the surface will increase the stability with each step from grade 5 to grade 4, grade 3, grade 2 to grade 1 (as described in post #7). Used in this sense tracktype helps to give a potential user at least some idea about what to expect when travelling a certain track, as @ezekielf explained already.
Sure there is no sharp separation from one tracktype to the next - I am mapping lots of tracks and still am musing from time to time if that one is grade 3 already or still grade 4, but overall tracktype is the best tag we have for a general classification and I am using it as basic tag for any track I am travelling.
Sometimes I wish for path to have a similar grade available. Surface is telling too little and smoothness is too much centred on four wheels.
Beware, you might be at it again, bordering on being considered badmouthing the tracktype key.
It would never ever occur to me to put that track from the photo of yours (cannot tell if bulldozers or frontloaders were involved there in the past, but to me it looks mostly like some heavy vehicles drove by there recently) into the same grade as e.g. this from the photo of mine:
For a start: Consider the amount of material brought in from apart when building this grade2 track.
PS: @ezekielf looks to me a person capable of bringing a bit of what discussed here to the Wiki documentation? This firmness only stuff in mentioned editor presets truly a misnomer, not only when it is winter, firmness is not merely an attribute of surface, it is a product of human work.
I with rhhs on this. The wiki is a bit vague, but I think the best interpretation is tracktype is about firmness. Smoothness (& surface) cover usability. For me, mostly making a distinction between a passenger car road, vs high clearance, vs 4wd roads. It doesn’t have to be in detail to be useful, usually a section from 1 intersection to the next would have the same tags.
I don’t use tracktype either, the roads here are mostly very firm, but may be soft in the spring, or after a lot of rain, smoothness and surface describe the road better than tracktype. I don’t see anything on the tracktype wiki page about the grade of development.
Below grade5 it says: An unimproved track – Now imagine going up: Each grade adds a bit more of improvement:
grade4 has some hard or compacted materials mixed in.
finally grade1 has a paved surface after all.
If in your area unimproved tracks are highly firm, perhaps it is not so obvious that those materials on the photos in the documentation were put there by people in order to develop the road?
Just looked at older posts, #7 also starts from the bottom of the scale and BTW comes to very reasonable conclusions that might make the tracktype key useful in locations where there is a lot of rock naturally occurring. At least this will spare mappers in my region seasonally re-tagging all tracks when the ground is firmly frozen in winter.
I would tag it tracktype=grade5 because if it rains (or snows and then the snow melts), the driver is under a high risk of getting stuck. One may even have trouble passing in moderately dry conditions. A four-wheel drive is highly recommended in any weather in this case regardless of the degree of development/maintenance.
Of course, one mapping in mostly-dry areas may not be as concerned about that.
The way is tagged with smoothness=very_horribleso a map user will know that even with a 4WD it’s not usable (the ruts are very deep, which is hard to catch on a photo). The ruts have been made by forestry trucks that have a clearance that’s much more than most 4WD cars.
it should be tracktype=grade5 because the material is very soft
it should be smoothness=very_horrible because the ruts are very deep
One could have a case with deep ruts in very firm material (eg. bare rock terrain) as well as a case with smooth surface but loose material (eg. wet beach sand). In either case, a different aspect dominates the routing decisions (regarding avoidance).
Me too. We see 3 mappers in this discussion acknowledging a firmness-mostly definition, and 3 adding an interpretation based on the idea of development. One of them just changed the wiki to impose this interpretation as the priority and now asks for a 75% majority to undo it.
In this Wikipedia section and its linked main article, the word “development” means “invention” and “growth”, not “construction standard”.
63 people here: 77% voted tracktype used mostly to represent firmness
58 people here (your own poll): 36% voted trackype is general quality (usability/utility for vehicles/maintanence or construction sophistication etc.) with some regard to firmness and 30% voted for mostly firmness with some regard to general quality (same list of qualities), 12% voted for solely firmness; options leaning to general quality sum 41%, options leaning to firmness sum 42%
The edit reflects neither of those polls and is clearly not reflecting emerging consensus either. Neither poll mentioned “how improved [the track is] over the surrounding ground”, which was added to the article’s first paragraph.
Try to get more people to vote in this one then I guess. However, the downward participation trend suggests that most forum participants have lost interest in discussions and polls about tracktype.
I just think the current wording is better and closer to how the tag is used than what was there beofre. I agree that "how much improved [the track is] over the surrounding ground” is weird language. I tried to suggest a better summary of the recent debates here: Poll: is tracktype about improvement? - #4 by supsup
But I got one dislike and no reactions. I think what I propose well summarizes how people seem to use the tag, I would be curious in feedback as to what is wrong with it.
