I was just going to say the same thing! I do have a particular perspective from the US and I don’t know how far that carries into other countries.

The comment from @VileGecko is a different (and valid!) perspective. It’s interesting to see how the nature of the highway infrastructure itself is different from one country to another. And of course that leads to differences in tagging conventions.

There’s no reason that roads in Ukraine should fit neatly into a classification that works for the US. And many of the roads I’m working with don’t fit neatly into @VileGecko’s scheme.

Take this road for example. This road is 6.5 miles long and connects to other roads in the area so it can be used for through travel. It is reasonably well maintained in comparison to other roads in the area (probably by the utility company) and the location is relatively fixed by that maintenance. It’s comfortably wide enough for heavy utility vehicles, but just a single lane. The road is on land managed by the US Bureau of Land Management but they have not published a name or reference for the road. I haven’t been there in person and there is no street-level imagery for the area but I would be surprised if there was any signage.

So, that’s not a perfect fit for either my scheme or @VileGecko’s scheme.

I’ve mapped this road as highway=track. If I were to map the small stubs going out to the individual pylons, I would tag them as highway=service. I think that makes sense in the context of other roads in the area. But if this was another country with different conventions for tagging roads, I would follow those other conventions.

@Msiipola there are certainly cases where the good judgement of the mapper is the best guide. Thanks for the comment!

Nice work! Around here in San Diego, we could use this data to discuss with our land managers the suitability of the utility roads they have designated for recreation. Grades >25% are not fun!

Haha! Yeah, I spent a lot of time figuring out where to find the files for BLM roads (i.e. “Ground Transportation Linear Features”) and then once you have that all the other pieces are right there.

The key is this page: https://www.blm.gov/services/geospatial/GISData And specifically this link on that page: https://gbp-blm-egis.hub.arcgis.com/

Importing the OHV areas for California was easy enough that I went ahead and downloaded the OHV Shape files for Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and Oregon. I’ll probably get to them before I finish with the GTLF data for California because conflating and aligning backcountry roads is a lot of work.

I skipped Alaska, though. BLM has a special relationship with Alaska and there’s a lot of unique data up there.

BLM data is generally not well represented in OSM, so there’s a lot of productive work that can be done easily. If you’re interested, pick a data set and start bringing it in to OSM!

Yeah, after attempting to use NHD for several waterways, I came to the conclusion that it’s almost always easier to draw the ways by hand.

That said, the NHD Flowline data is useful as a reference if you need to confirm the extent of a smaller, unnamed waterway. And in forested areas where the aerial imagery isn’t useful, it may be a good source of data about waterways.

The other NHD data files can also be useful for reference.

The Waterbody data can be helpful where it’s difficult to distinguish between open water and wetland using aerial imagery.

The Point data can help locate springs, which are often not directly visible in aerial imagery.

And the Line data can help determine the location and extent of dams and other features.

But in every case you want to use the NHD data cautiously and attempt to confirm and correct it using other sources.

Thanks @Skunkman56! I did see that work on feedback from PublicDomainOSM to US govt. agencies was underway. I’d really like to see that happen, especially with BLM routes where the data quality is not that good. If there’s an opportunity to try out working with feedback to BLM, USFS, or USGS, I’d be up for that.

I’ve been working on BLM routes in Imperial County, CA. There are official, numbered BLM routes that traverse desert dune areas where the sand frequently shifts.

The actual tracks on the ground follow the general direction within a few hundred yards, but vary significantly depending on where the dunes can be crossed.

I could clearly tag these ways with trail_visibility=horrible. But are there other tags that would be appropriate given how navigation on the ground varies?