Hello OSM community, please allow me to make a trunk road in the desert from Libya to Sudan and Chad so that it can be a GPS solution to keep people from getting lost. Because I traveled that way, and I still remember the dangerous sand and other ways, mostly like asphalt, people ran by car up to 180 kph. Just so we can put some instructions for the road on the application, people can use it.
-
is there road there?
-
is anything mapped in OSM right now there?
-
is it fulfilling requirements for
highway=trunk(see Tag:highway=trunk - OpenStreetMap Wiki ) ?
Can a trunk road have informal=yes 
This reminds me of one instance where a person mapped a gate that doesn’t exist at a curve, so that his router would alert him to the need to slow down beforehand.
1 Like
But isnt there some kind of “offroad”-pathing of informal guideways for cars? I’ve tried to map some village areas in trans-saharan africa and there are no real roads, just criss crossing of wheeltracks. Surely across the desert, as the op says, there is a “general” way to go, without there being anything specific, just as there can be a (hiking) trail over bare rock.
I think what you want are highway=tracks. Tracks represent an improvised route. Often created by animals or people traveling along a similar path over time.
It is rarely paved and usually only passable by off-road vehicles or animals. Though I could see if enogh compacted earth was exposed to make it usable by regular vehicles. In that case, I would add surface=compacted for the level of drivablity. It would also be helpful to add access tags for more common street vehicles especially if the route is used for regular transportation of goods.
1 Like
This is what smoothness is trying to describe. access tags are for describing what vehicles can legally use the road so are not appropriate here.
1 Like