From this discussion, it appears there is a great deal of confusion as to how to interpret the tracktype tag. There appear to be two schools of tagging practice: those that tag it to describe the state of development and maintenance of a highway=track, and those that tag it to describe the surface firmness of a track. I’m wondering how many belong to each school, and if there is a clear majority for one of them.
How do you use the tracktype tag?
I use tracktype to describe a track’s state of development and maintenance
I use tracktype to describe a tracks’ surface firmness
0voters
(i.e this is not meant to discuss how it should be tagged, but only to find out the actual usage of the tag)
Edit: deleted the picture and the question below it.
I am hardly using tracktype because it is not clear how to apply it, but I would not think about this as tracktype=grade1 because firmness is not everything. Not sure about which scale we are speaking because the RC-Car is maybe scale 1:10 but even if we do not suppose it to be actual car size but just 30-40cm, this is so uneven that you cannot use it with many vehicles (e.g. tractor required or mountain bike with good skills), not a place you would want to take your children on a bike tour or push a stroller along.
From what I understand, there is some requirement of firmness for grade1 or 2, but also for evenness.
No, I just didn’t want to spend time on finding a better one. It’s distracting from the question of the poll instead of illustrating that state of development and firmness are two different things, so I deleted the picture and the question below it.
this does not work as there could be excellently maintain surface=compacted track - which should get tracktype=grade2 as it is not paved
and there could be abandoned motorway or other major road which is now fulfilling role of highway=track tracktype=grade1 surface=concrete
And even with zero maintenance will take some time before it degrades.
and there could be muddy tracks through marches where enormous effort is put into keeping them passable at all
in protected areas maintenance may be put into destruction of track
effort put into maintenance has very different effect depending on many factors
I initially voted for the “state of development and maintenance” option, but have removed my vote because combining these two concepts actually doesn’t make sense to me. I do use tracktype to indicate the state of development, but not maintenance. A paved track has a higher level of development than an unpaved one, even if the paved one is currently in disrepair and the unpaved one is very well compacted and has just had recent maintenance. The paved one would be grade1 and the unpaved one would be grade2. So my vote is “none of the above”.
I agree that state of development and level of maintenance are two different concepts, but think that they are more strongly correlated with each other than with surface firmness. You mentioned “state of development” here while @Map_HeRo mentioned maintenance in his following post, so that’s why I included both in one of the answer options. Maintenance is also mentioned in the wiki. Maybe I should have written “a track’s state of development and/or maintenance”…
Option (c): I don’t use tracktype because I believe it to be a skunked tag. My experience with how it is used in practice is that grade1 is used as a synonym for surface=paved, while unpaved tracks get randomly assigned a grade between (usually) 2 and 5.
The basic qualification for the different track type values is the state of development and - by far less important - also maintenance. If a track is not maintained at all it will deteriorate over the time and may need a downgrading probably. In case of a track with a chipseal surface this may happen quite fast, and when the chipseal is gone the track isn’t grade 1 any longer. Anyhow the grade of development is much more important, as already described in the linked topic.
Btw: the grade of development is very closely related to the permanent surface firmness. Most tracks are created to give access to farmland or forests where soft underground is prevalent. Undeveloped soft underground remains soft, although it may be hard as rock after extensive dry periods. As soon as rains starts the firmness changes rapidly. By developing a track step by step as decribed here this dependency on weather conditions is fairly reduced. The higher the grade of development, the higher is the permanent firmness of such a track.
In so far the permanent firmness of a track reflects the grade of development.
Even if there are different understandings of how to assess tracktype, the classification works quite well, at least in my area. Most of the tracks I have checked in the past years (mapped by others) fit the scheme I described. There may be an up- or downgrade of 1 level necessary from time to time but overall the understanding of the different types appears to be same.
Perhaps I’ve missed it, but have this term been defined / provided examples with explanations somewhere? I’m scrambling to understand what people actually mean by it (and if they all think it means the same thing).
The best I can guess at the moment, is that it means something along the lines of how much human effort, mechanization and money was put into creating quality surface; which seems to boil down to the value of surface=* tag mostly? E.g.:
surface=asphalt/concrete is “best state/grade of development”
surface=gravel/compacted is “medium state/grade of development”
surface=grass/dirt is “lowest state/grade of development”
Am I close? Or am I completely missing the point?
Same question goes for definition/examples of “state of maintenance” (which to me seems to boil down mostly to smoothness=* tag, e.g. unmaintened surface=asphalt which is smoothness=excellent while superbly maintained will gradually become smoothness=bad or worse if maintenance is poor. Similar pattern would happen with surface=gravel (although even its best smoothness is of course going to be lower)
Oh, so “grade of development” and “state of development” are two completely different concepts?
As a non-native speaker, I definitely conflated the two while reading the thread (perhaps I’m not the only one?). If they were indeed intended as separate concepts, then it makes it even harder IMHO.
I.e. after reading the thread I assumed the problem[1] was because original poll conflated “development” and “maintenance” (IOW, it offered only two basic choices, instead of three: “firmness”, “development” & “maintenance” - make that eight answers if we count all their combinations + “something else” [2])
But if those “grade” and “state” were indeed intended as separate terms with separate meaning, then the poll should’ve offered (at least) fivebasic choices, i.e. 32 different answers (if I haven’t miscalculated) instead, right?:
I am also a non-native speaker, but I thought about it as distinguishing how much effort was put into it/change from initial state.
If you start from 20m deep swamp or jungle or steep slopes, then massive effort will get you to something worse than what can be achieved on flat deforested plain with no effort at all.
