OSM Merge - United States Forest Service data

[Skunkman56]

I read with interest the announcement of the OSM-Merge project, however on checking out the data extracts (probably from the USFS GeoData Discovery Tool) - I see poor consistency with existing OSM standards for name=* and ref=* values for National Forest roads and trails-

United States roads tagging - OpenStreetMap Wiki

And more generally:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/US_Forest_Service_Data
Thoughts? Comments?

[Minh_Nguyen (Minh Nguyễn)]

Regarding the National Forest roads:

Network=* tagging proposal for USFS Roads

As most of us here may be aware, the US has probably the most complicated and fragmented route signage system of any country in the world. We’ve made good progress as a community on devising tagging schemes for most nationwide, statewide and local route=road networks, though there are still a few odds and ends that haven’t been worked out. Notably, the US Forest Service (USFS) is one of several federal land administrators that signpost their own routes. The National Forest Road System has a dist…

[Skunkman56]

Thanks for the additional detail for folks following along. I whole-heartily agree with all the prior discussion and current trend with detailed mapping of National Forest roads, to promote safety, public data transparency and data access, even resource protection and recreational use management.

I used to work in the Forest Circus as a third-ring timber ape and even as a militia wildland fire stooge, so am familar with their travel management policy and standards. There is a big difference between National Forest Highways and Forest Roads- which you can safely operate passenger vehicles on, which require high-clearance vehicles, even which roads have a critical design vehicle- some Forest Highways can take a class A motorhome (or Type 1, Type 2 fire engine!) others cannot. All important safety concerns, thus relevant and accurate tagging is important to communicate for various data users.

[rsavoye (Rob Savoye)]

The data extracts are a bit out of date, I need to update them as I’ve made major improvements in converting them to an OSM syntax for conflation. There’s also huge bugs in the external datasets, all of which needed to be handled. I got side-tracked updating remote highways in Colorado forests, so they’re updated before wildland fire season. I also plan to upload the conflated data files once I’m convinced the code is ready.

[rsavoye (Rob Savoye)]

OSM Merge is primarily focused on the MVUM roads, most of which require a high clearance vehicle. In Colorado at least, about 80% of these only had highway=track, and a bunch of TIGER nonsense. Having accurate information of names of USFS reference numbers enables us to communicate a location without a GPS, or to better relate a location to a paper map. Since we use all of these remote highways for wildland fire and backcountry rescues, updating them all improves our ability to respond.