Hello fellow mappers!
I am facing a little trouble with mapping Ice roads. The winter is great this year and finally the offical ice roads have been opened. However, the issue stands with how to map these properly without them looking like a road across the ocean during warm time of the year.
Currently I have been mapping the offical routes using these tags:
highway=yes
ice_road=yes
seasonal=yes
winter_road=yes
These tags were used for ice roads between Saaremaa and Hiiumaa islands, between Rohuküla and Vormsi island, between Munalaid and Kihnu. But now I see that there have been also one more route, this year its unoffical route between Haapsalu and Osterby marina.
That route is mapped using these next tags:
highway=tertiary
seasonal=yes
surface=ice
Now, Winter road and Ice road have overlaping meaning - Ice road is winter road but winter road is not always ice road.
The routes in our case are ice roads, meaning going over the waterbody.
Both tagging methods in my eyes are acceptable looking at both roads meaning on Wiki.
First option do not leave a visible road on the map, second option leave visible road over the map as it is currently observed between Haapsalu and Osterby. Due to visibility users may be confused when they see the road over the sea while standing in front of it puzzled where is the road.
So, which option would be better suited for our use case of offical routes over the sea? I am aligning toward the first option but would like to have a broader discussion about this matter.