Incorrect road classification for driveways in Finland; overnoding

[ctphel]

Hi Microsoft Open Maps Team,
It seems that you've added a large number of rural driveways in Finland like this one https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1150093621 and incorrectly classified them as highway=track.

Referencing OpenStreetMap practices of road classification that its Wiki describes, the entry for highway=track states:

Some examples where highway=track is generally not appropriate:

• A road that is minor but serves as a connection in the general-purpose road network. See highway=unclassified.
• A minor road with permanent residences along it. See highway=residential.
• A minor road providing primary access to one or several permanent residences (driveway). See highway=service.
• A minor road providing primary access to a commercial or industrial facility. See highway=service.
• A trail or path that is not wide enough for a typical four-wheeled motor vehicle. See highway=path, footway, cycleway, and bridleway.

If none of the above are true for a road, and its primary use is access to the surrounding land, highway=track is likely appropriate. Some examples:

• A farm track used for access to crop fields, pastures, orchards or similar agricultural land.
• A forest road used for outdoor recreation, logging, or other forestry purposes (aka, forest track, woods road, logging road)
• A fire road used for fighting wildfires in grassland, scrubland, and forestland.
• A minor road used for access to conservation land.
• A dirt track used for access to the mountains, desert, or other remote area.

Also at Examples:

Please note that highway=track should be chosen based on function, not simply because a road looks like one.

However, driveways or even rural public roads can look like tracks as well. In those cases a different highway=* classification should be used.

In short, highway=track is supposed to be used only for roads that are primarily for agriculture or forestry, not residences.

The road in question – and other similar roads that are not part of the general public road network and only lead to residences – are supposed be classified as highway=service, and, where applicable, service=driveway, if that road ends at a residence.

In other words, roads that are basically dead ends and lead nowhere but residences, summer cottages or industry, are to be tagged highway=service, and service=driveway where applicable.
If road topology is such that roads form an enclosed loop and are in public use, they are tagged highway=unclassified or above.

At the bottom is an illustration of this.

Roads like these are tracks https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/327563497 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/465443951, since they do not lead to buildings, and are only used for agriculture and forestry.

—

Another issue with the road I linked in the beginning is that it suffers from "overnoding"; it has a very large number of nodes that are not strictly functional.
When the Simplify-function in the JOSM editor is applied with a 2 meter accuracy, 35 of its 48 nodes can be deleted, so the road could have been drawn with 73% less data and the road would still have reasonable accuracy.
Overnoding puts unnecessary load on the database, so it is encouraged that roads are drawn with reasonable accuracy, not perfect. JOSM's Simplify does a very good job of cleaning up unnecessary nodes.

I have supplied another illustration of this below. The brown dashed line is the original, and the black line is the simplified. It is a bit messy and unclear but I hope it illustrates how unnecessary nodes can be safely culled while retaining accurate road geometry.

—

I request that MSFTOpenMaps

• changes all the previously uploaded roads to the appropriate classifications,
• changes their classification methods so that they follow the wider OpenStreetMap practices,
• changes their importing/uploading methods so that roads are cleaned up from overnoding before uploading so that unnecessary data that burdens the database is no longer uploaded.

Thank you.

[TaraVuj]

Dear @ctphel thank you for reaching out. We have always been mindful in our mapping, trying to be respective towards community efforts and policies. With that in mind we will approach this seriously and carefully review our work as well as community policies and inputs and resources you've provided. We'll reach out soon with information on any changes and clarifications if these are necessary.