OpenStreetMap
ref = FS xx
highway = unclassified
- maintained as a through road connecting other roads OR lenghty and provides access to a significant point of interest
- generally maintained to a level usable by a standard passenger car without AWD/4WD (smoothness = bad, or better)
- paved or unpaved
- Example: Cooper Creek Road (FS 33) and Blue Ridge Road (FS 42), in Georgia
highway = track
- not a through road
- unpaved
- generally unmaintained, AWD/4WD is recommended or necessary (smoothness = very_bad, or worse)
highway = service
- not a through road
- paved or unpaved
- short or medium length
- provides access to a point of interest
Discussion
Comment from maxerickson on 27 July 2017 at 01:37
This matches up well with what I’ve done with a nearby area of national forest: osm.org/#map=10/46.1313/-86.5482
I haven’t made an explicit effort to ground check much of it, but I’ve crossed checked it with USFS data. There is a imagery layer that available that shows the USFS data:
@Richard/diary/26099
Though I’ve found it more useful to get the source data from https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/edw/datasets.php and load an extract of it into JOSM, after adding some OSM tagging ( https://gist.github.com/maxerickson/32ca41e72458b12a5734f97f75800448 ) to get nicer styling.
Comment from Robert Copithorne on 27 July 2017 at 02:39
I agree generally with this organization. A lot of roads I’ve mapped were done from aerial photos.
I tend to see a hierarchy: Unclassified, Service, Track. Nearly all these roads are gravel, and have a Service tag “resource extraction”.
A lot of forestry roads in my area (Vancouver Island) were built to a high load carrying capacity at one time, but are now overgrown, and are barely visible on aerial photos ( Bing, Mapbox). USGS topographic maps are often useful in identifying these roads, now tagged as tracks. USGS maps cover British Columbia, I guess because the province bridges the gap between Alaska and Continental US.
Most, if not all of the roads outside urban areas, were constructed to serve resource extraction activities. As such there is a visible pattern or flow of traffic from outlying areas to central delivery points.
Comment from Alan Trick on 29 July 2017 at 16:58
Service roads in OSM and Forest Service Roads in North America are entirely different beasts, in my understanding. The confusing naming is unfortunate, and you can probably blame the Brits for it :P
Comment from maxerickson on 29 July 2017 at 19:12
As Jack the Ripper says in the diary entry, many roads in US National Forests are built to provide access to a point of interest and will be maintained for use by passenger vehicles. These are sensibly classified as highway=service.
Comment from Jack the Ripper on 30 July 2017 at 01:24
Hi, all! Thanks for the comments so far!
@maxerickson - I’m aware of the imagery layers in both JOSM and iD for the USFS roads, and I do use those frequently to find roads that haven’t been mapped (which seem to be few in my area). But your other approach sounds interesting, so I might need to set aside some time one weekend to try it out and see how it works for me.
@Robert - By “resource extraction” I assume you mean logging, mining, etc. I haven’t come across much of that in my wanderings through the woods. Mostly what I see are roads that run along/near creeks, with a lot of good spots for fishing, and various campsites along the road. Some of these roads are 5 or 10 miles long (or longer!), and are usually as wide in most places as a typical rural county-maintained gravel or dirt road. Those, I’m usually marking as “unclassified” because they’re “big” roads. Then there are the smaller, usually but not always sized to be about 1 lane, that have various points of interest along or at the end, and are generally usable by passenger cards (not counting recent storm damage or other activity). Those get the “service” designation. Then there are the rarely-maintained 1-lane ones that might or might not have something interesting along them, and typically need something beefier than a normal family sedan. They usually (but not always) get set as “track.”
@Alan - Yes, I understand :-) I’m trying to use “service” in the spirit of how it is described in the wiki.
Just to provide a couple of examples: FS 33 “Cooper Creek Road” in north Georgia I’ve tagged as highway=unclassified because it’s a wide, somewhat well-traveled road that has a lot of activity for such a remote area. Lots of fishing along the creek, lots of single campsites. The same for FS 42 “Blue Ridge Road” (that I’m still working on. It’s a very long, through-road that has a lot of activity along it, and is in reasonable condition. The same cannot be said for FS 665 “Tickanetley Road” that branches off of FS 42. You might make it in a passenger car, but be sure to have snacks and water on hand in case you have to hike back to where you can get a cell signal to call for help. There are, however, some interesting things along it that someone with 4WD can access, including some pretty isolated camp sites. Several hiking trails criss-cross through the entire area, including the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. FS 816 I marked as “service” because, while it’s a couple of miles long, it isn’t a through-road, and at the end you can park and hike a short distance to the Toccoa River and the swinging bridge over the river. Nice scenery for lunch, and just a nice bridge to see.
Comment from maxerickson on 30 July 2017 at 15:28
It’s likely necessary to use a command like
ogr2ogr /share/gis/extracts/test.shp /share/gis/USFSOsm/ -clipsrc -85.2 46.2 -84.5 46.6to clip out a smaller region of the OSM tagged shapefile, JOSM doesn’t seem to do all that well trying to load the whole file.