While working on the SinkIslandCheck MapRoulette challenge I have found quite a lot of non-public roads that have been given a class. This does not seem to make sense as I would have thought that none of them would meet the requirements to be classified this way.
I am assuming that they have been tagged this way to make them appear at lower zoom levels.
To me these should be at most unclassified or maybe even just service. What do you think?
Any particular area, Andrew?
Western Australia, mostly mines and military areas.
A number of RAAF bases in other states.
They sound like service roads to me.
Yep. I’d go with that as well.
Can you set up a OT search to find them all & spread them out for everybody to help fix?
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a military base having tertiary or even secondary roads. Larger bases tend to function as self-contained towns.
Agreeing with @carnildo here: I realize I’m in the USA, but I think roads on landuse=military might be tagged as highway=unclassified or highway=service at first entry but that indeed, a “main drag” on a military reservation might very well be tagged highway=tertiary or even highway=secondary. I’ve tagged a little bit like this here and there, and it seems the right thing to do.
Duck test: if it flies, waddles and quacks like one…call it a duck. (People can and do quibble over minor details). The usual OSM tenet of “tag your best” applies.
In that case I’d say highway=service.
I think the usual expectation is that roads tagged this way are public roads, but yes, just as with footpaths there is potentially a need to identify a hierarchy of roads in places like large military reservations, industrial sites, hospital and university campuses, particularly as some will have some roads which are clearly highway=residential. At present my local university campus is mapped this way, but I’ve never been particularly satisfied by the approach, even given the appropriate access tags (mainly motor_vehicle=destination), and would probably use highway=service if starting out mapping it. Another example, where I’m happy with a highway=tertiary tag is on a privately-owned residential estate, and even here there is (automatic) gated access on most entry points.
Also mappers love quirky exceptions.
I agree that that’s not a motorway: it may be constructed to motorway standards, but it’s not used as such. Compare to Hanford Route 4: it’s the main entrance to the Hanford Site, and despite being a private road, sees probably around 10,000 vehicles a day.