OpenStreetMap
About a year ago, I actually encountered a use of highway=road as I aligned roads and added a bit more detail to the area at the south end of Mendocino National Forest. And what is a “road”? A placeholder! “Undefined” is actually quite defined comparatively. I investigated what it should be a placeholder for and found it was marking an ATV trail. It had been there a few years and could survive a few more.
Since JOSM doesn’t even seem to know one might want to set a value called “atv”, perhaps I should explain. Also called a “quad”, these narrow little four wheeled things can’t quite go everywhere a motorcycle can go, but they’ll get a lot more places than a 4x4 vehicle. There were 3 wheeled ones (probably still are in other places) but they were banned because they killed people more often due to rolling more easily. People grumbled at first. Three wheels is more fun! But they seem happy now. It hurts to roll over. Often tagging goes a little like this:
highway=[um]
atv=yes/designated
motorcar=no
maxwidth=1.27
(No side-by-sides, as the signs in Colorado often said! Those are often known as ATV or UTV.)
But is [um] a path or a track?
Well, the wiki on “path” is quite clear: “A highway=path is not for use by four-wheeled (two-track) vehicles.” Then it muddles a little: “A path-like way where four-wheeled vehicles are allowed, is likely better tagged as a highway=track or highway=service.” Only “likely”.
Meanwhile, on the wiki on “track” we find that track is “generally not appropriate” for “A trail or path that is not wide enough for a typical four-wheeled motor vehicle.” There is a footnote to clarify this: “A “typical four-wheeled motor vehicle” means a general purpose or average motor vehicle commonly used in a given region. The size and capability of what is considered a typical, common, or average vehicle varies around the world.”
Both are very sensible definitions. Both leave no space for the ATV trail in an area where the “motorcar” is the typical vehicle. But with the wiggle, it could go to either.
I did come to ATV trail while mapping an area I’d been in eastern Nevada and settled on marking it as “path” for the simple reason that one would typically have to stop and change vehicles to drive it legally, even if their standard transport is high clearance, short wheelbase. However, it doesn’t do a good job of differentiating those routes from the very different vehicle=no paths of the wilderness beside it.
There does seem to be a wiki page for atv and it’s badly written and doesn’t think much of proposals. It decidedly comes down on the side of using “track”, but without any justification. I’d really rather not sully my precious “paths” (see user name with “hike” in it) with the likes of an ATV trail, but must admit “path” really may be the best fit. Sorry wiki page editor. People will try to drive it with their Hummer if you mark it as a track.
I find myself wanting a… highway=narrow_track, perhaps. (What’s just one more? Proliferate further!)
Still, motorcycle trails will always have the above problem. This is what access tags are for. And a good renderer.
Poking around Overpass for things marked atv=designated, I’m finding a lot of tracks, so perhaps others haven’t come to the same conclusions I have, or they read that wiki page. I’m finding a lot of other modes being “designated” on those tracks. That’s probably not right since “foot” and “bicycle” are usually “allowed, discouraged” by the Forest Service on their ATV and motorcycle trails. For atv=yes, I see more of a mix, and some of the tracks do allow larger vehicles. Non-standard tagging all over the place. There’s a “4wd” (instead of “4wd_only” or “ohv”) and “car” (instead of “motorcar”). It’s all a muddled mess.
What is typically used with both motorcar=no and atv=yes? I should be able to make Overpass do this? I sure can’t make Taginfo. What is the “correct” way if one really thinks about it?
Fundamentally, neither fits. “Road.” I understand.
Just don’t go marking “Jeep trails” as “paths” the way the Forest Service sometimes does. I see the sense of blurring the differentiation between “path” and “track” as CyclOSM does. Also of having a map focused on one transport type. I just wish there was a pull down to change between transport types.
Discussion
Comment from valhikes on 8 July 2024 at 18:30
Function rather than form is what the “highway” tag is about, which brings me to another (but related) line of reasoning leading to “path” since the ATV trails function is fundamentally the same as the motorcycle trail function, just the vehicle is different. They really ought to be the same highway tag. (This also argues against trying to add a “narrow_track” or something. Yes, “path” does a lot of lifting, but there’s lots of ways to specify the form to add to it.)
I need to remember this function, not form, also as the area National Forests send their “arterial routes” (National Forest highways) over low standard roads. Others before me went ahead and marked some “unclassified” as a demotion from “tertiary”. I can’t fault them, although maybe just over the area that is lesser standard. I did add a surface=dirt and smoothness=very_bad” and **tracktype=grade3 to maximize the hints that the road degrades over that segment.
Comment from Marcos Dione on 9 July 2024 at 08:33
is max_width related to the max road width or max vehicle width? Wouldn’t it be better if this was united into the width, which I usually use (the very few times I used it) to mark the more narrow width of the section of the road?
Comment from valhikes on 9 July 2024 at 13:52
“max_width” is a legal distinction. These roads are limited to 52” or less, so the trail is (hopefully) at least that wide. I’m not so sure that’s true on this trail across Pilot Creek in Six Rivers National Forest. However, there’s some in Los Padres National Forest that go across fire roads and the restriction is only imposed by a gate at the start.
And I see that’s been changed to “maxwidth” recently, and that seems to be the correct usage. Dude, poke me when I’m getting it wrong! I guess the user probably doesn’t know if I’m getting it consistently wrong or will even touch an ATV trail ever again. Also, those pokes can go either way easily. (User who added bridges to unknown stream crossings on a cheap secondary forest road that would never ever see one bridge, let alone four, didn’t seem to appreciate the poke…)
I’ll fix those in the next couple days. There haven’t been that many. Also edit this entry.
Comment from valhikes on 10 July 2024 at 23:41
And now for the argument that comes down on the side of using “track”, because the writers of the ohv and orv wiki pages clearly come down on the side of using “track” for ATV and there’s even a little suggestion of using “track” for motorcycle trails. Okay, the ORV page explicitly suggests using “path” for motorcycle trails “as often width-restrictors and trail maintenance only extends to this narrow width to permit only these types of vehicles”. Same thing applies to ATV trails! Unlike the atv page, they do look like there’s been some thought going on in the writing. (Admittedly, OHV and ATV both have the same main author and ORV needs help with its conversions between inches and meters.)
[Oh, bother. I’ve forgotten the argument I formulated this morning. It was very convincing, I assure you. Besides, a “narrow_track” is, quite obviously, a track with a narrow “width” set. Obviously.]
And if the Hummer goes down that ATV trail on the east side of Pilot Creek, well, there’s one less Hummer on the road. It may be that “track” also does some heavy lifting, but no more than “path” even without these.
Some notes: Never “FS” in front of the reference number for a road. The usage is either “FR” for secondary roads (forest road/route), or “NF” for primary roads (forest highway/arterial). (See here.) These denote the road system. Trails don’t have these. Never “TR” or whatever else you are making up for the reference number of trails. It’s meaningless. References are usually supposed to only contain the number, but roads in the US have prefixes by custom. ATV trails are in the forest trail system, so should not get a prefix. That’s one way to tell the difference between the road you can drive and the road you have to get out and use your noisy, open vehicle on, at least in the National Forest. At least if people are following the convention.
Signage: Quite often it’s only the reference (sometimes in a shortened version leaving off the initial digits) that gets signed, so it’s important to use a renderer that displays references.
Aside: OHV vs ORV. Of course you only need one and of course it should be “ohv”. Most of these places still require users to be on designated routes and ORV suggests otherwise. Also, “ohv” is vastly more used.