Not just my opinion, 88% of respondents in this poll right here associate tracktype with several different aspects. That already suggests it functions as a rough classification in practice, rather than a single well-defined dimension.
If tracktype were strictly about firmness only, we likely wouldn’t be seeing so much difficulty agreeing on a precise definition.
As you pointed out, there are many factors involved beyond surface and smoothness, such as firmness, maintenance, engineering, etc. These could also be mapped with more specific tags where needed. That would simply add precision, while tracktype remains a rough classification.
From a data consumer perspective (e.g. routing), this could also be handled through weighting. A router could use tracktype as a coarse signal when it’s the only tag available, but give higher priority to more precise tags such as smoothness, surface, or others when they are present.
I’d like to see in the wiki text that also mappers should give priority (if they can) to mapping smoothness, then surface, firmness (if approved) and finally tracktype, where tracktype could cover aspects of usability that the preceding ones don’t cover.
I think it’s also worth adding to the wiki that “many/some mappers consider tracktype to be a skunked tag.” (with link to that wiki)
That made me curious. I again looked up the localized taginfo at geofabrik (something I was already told is out of scope in a debate about the global use, yet I dissent.) I found use of tracktype on something not a track varying between 5 to 20% over the globe, where it is 7.5%. I found a particularly strange usage in Brazil:
PS: I still think the opening paragraph in the Wiki conflates too many aspects. It is a bit like the key itself Still pondering how to make that better.
UPDATE: For comparison Austria, funnily the same feature, not as prominent but still, grade1 most likely not on track. I can only imagine that coming from swapping out the primary highway tag and leaving tracktype in place.
Nah. There are 55ktracktype=grade1 in Austria, and 48k of those are in combination with highway=track. That does leave 7k or so, like these, which look like mostly highway=service roads, including some that have been changed from track.
None of this is surprising, or (to the mapper or data consumer) confusing. What exactly is your point?
Looking at data from a single country like Austria to infer how the tag should be used globally seems rather limited. If the goal is to find evidence in the data, it would make more sense to analyse the global dataset, for example using tools like The QLever SPARQL engine: fast, scalable, with autocompletion and text search or by running a script on the full planet.
I can’t run that analysis right now, but I would be quite surprised if it didn’t show large numbers of grade2 and grade3 on non-track highways as well.
From my experience, many cases of tracktype=grade1 on non-track highways often come from ways that were reclassified from highway=track to another highway type once someone realised they were paved or more road-like, while the tracktype tag was simply left behind.
The sentence there I’d say closer to what seems to be consensus here?
Provides a classification of tracks based on how well-maintained a track is, particularly regarding surface firmness.
vs.
Tracktype is a measure of how well-maintained a track or other road is, particularly regarding surface firmness.
Measure may make it sound like there is a device to measure firmness, which might exist, but certainly no device exists to measure maintenance. Might point out why people mistake tracktype to be single aspect firmness only?
Still struggling to find a phrase the captures the multi-aspect best while keeping editor presets right. Meanwhile learned, other types of road must not be excluded. Improved likely the better term than developed. It is in the values table too.
I did it because of this recent change which endorsed one aspect over others being discussed and, in fact, does not agree with poll results on this topic with the highest number of participants.
On that article, which is not the main article about tracktype, tracktype has been described as:
“surface of the way” (May 2008 to April 2019)
“maintenance intensity and construction type” (April 2019 to February 2021)
“maintenance intensity and surface firmness” (February 2021 to April 2021)
“roadway firmness” (April 2021 to March 2026)
We can compare that with the changes to the main tracktype article:
The 2019 edits across the two articles, though in the direction of introducing “construction” concepts, were done months apart by different editors, and since it didn’t last very long it seems there was no wide agreement on that.
I think that’s too vague; it would increase confusion because each person (especially newcomers) would have their own criteria for evaluating “how good it is to travel the track.”
Since the article about highway=track could lose sync with the main article on tracktype again, perhaps it would be better to simply state in that tracktype adds details without specifying what, and then the interested reader could read the article on tracktype to see what kind of detail it represents. A single point to keep up-to-date in the wiki.
Newcomers don’t read the wiki, at least not until they’ve found their way around OSM a bit. They also won’t be using a micrometer to measure particle size or some kind of electrical test to measure moisture. The idea of tracktype is that it’s a simple classification. Yes, there are edge cases, and in many parts of the world tracks aren’t “as easy to travel along” in different seasons.
OSM documentation should be to help people map, not to appease the “tagging astronauts” who in just the last week have contributed to tracktype threads with currently 417 posts** in them.
** Found by searching threads for tracktype and counting those with updates in the last week.
Perhaps then the wiki should prioritize the aspect highlighted by map editors; otherwise, some mappers who read the wiki may be using the tag differently than newcomers.
At least for me, I started editing by noticing something was wrong in a map. I think it started to be footpaths in the mountains, that got rendered as paved sidewalks in the map I was using. And also confusion between path and track. I solely relied on what else I saw on the map, so I formed my own definitions based on what I saw rendered in the map and then tagged in practice. I never started to use those editors presets. Not sure how common start that is. Why am I saying this is that editor presets are not the only influences on newcomers.
Still pondering how to make that better.
