5

haha passing places, sigh.

Thin roads are the same sort of highways as wider roads. The width is the variant. width= works for this. This involves more research than basically anyone is willing to do though.

In terms of travelling a road by car, there are 4 width’s that really have any effect, and they also have to consider the sides of the road.

  1. 2 cars can drive pass normally
  2. 2 cars slow down to pass, it’s a near squeeze with one of the car’s tires brushing the side of the road
  3. 2 cars pass and 1 car has to leave the paved road onto the grass
  4. 1 car has to reverse or stop, go to a passing place and the other passes.

The speed’s for these roads vary hugely and therefore really need splitting for route planners. 1) is 50-60mph, 2) 40-50mph, 3) 25-35mph 4) 20-25mph

The ability to pass on a road also makes the width clear to a necessary level to render it, therefore this is the method which I have been using for the last year or so and I can say it works fine after this period of testing this method, primarily for mapping smaller country lanes.

As for the highway=track suggestion. This just doesn’t work, because track is a physical thing which is required with multiple highway types, therefore using this tag makes accurate mapping impossible, and incorrect. Therefore I state the tracktype alone, which is why it is different to surface values, as well it’s lack of overly exact specification for use which don’t work in reality.

Passing place is only useful if you stick it on nodes for each passing spot, and again I don’t think people will be mapping to this level for a long time. To state a road has passing places is obvious, because every road does. (I await the obvious answers to that eagerly)

In the end I suggest you just tag how you want, as this question has been being asked for about 20 months, therefore I wouldn’t expect any resolving of it anytime soon, but what I just said has worked fine for me.