That other thread is dealing specifically with Forest Service roads and is mostly just a discussion, with no real calls or even plans to call for everything to be an option. But it is still a very relevant discussion because there are many variations in road types and qualities. And when you get off the beaten (paved) path, a miss-categorized or miss-identified road can get someone stuck, and in the woods stuck can and has meant death, both in cold of winter and heat of summer people have gotten stuck because a road wasn't what their GPS or map said it was and by the time they realized their mistake there was no turning back. I was nearly caught by this myself last summer, I wouldn't have been at any risk, just really annoyed. My family went camping, my parents got enough signal to text lat lon coordinates so I looked to Waze, googlemaps and my TomTom to try to pick the best route in. Everything pointed to one route in being much shorter than the alternative, but then my father came out to good signal to send instructions to take the alternate way in. I did, it was late and dark and my kids were whining by the time we got to camp, and the next day I happened across the "shorter route" everything else pointed to. It had been allowed to grow in to be an ATV trail and it was a rough ride on an ATV. Based on everything all the maps were showing (all from the same tigermaps) had I taken the better route, I might have had a much longer drive, if not gotten stuck (unlikely because I know when a road is getting too narrow for my truck.)troyv wrote:I guess my eyebrows got raised when I saw using types of pavements, like sealcoating, as an attribute for roads. Maybe part of that was in the other thread I posted where I saw that. I don't see much of that in this thread.skbun wrote: There is a standing request which started with the US 2013 meetup in February to do the following:
- Eliminate the 'service road' road type
- Rename 'Dirt/4x4 road' to 'Unpaved'
- Add a new type called '4x4/offroad/I-forget-the-exact-word', an even "lower" class than 'Unpaved'.
Doing this would still allow users to use the checkboxes that say 'Avoid unpaved roads' or 'Avoid long ones' meaningfully, while also keeping it simple for the user. As far as I know there is no ETA on these changes being made.
My other thing with perfectly drivable gravel roads is why would you want to avoid it? I do see some reasons for avoiding those types of roads mentioned in here, like paint getting chipped and excess dust, and messing up your car. That seems reasonable. But I also see that if a graveled road is a popular and efficient route anyway, I would think that the municipality in charge would want to pave it. I guess I am not a real big fan of the "unpaved" attribute. I just don't see enough reason to have it.
You may not care about all the variations but when those variations or the lack of a good method of portraying them due to too simple a set of road types. It becomes important to some of us who actually deal with these road types. No we don't want a mile long list of road surfaces, pavement methods, maintenance schedules and so on but there are definite problems with the current "It's a paved road type or it's dirt/4X4" options.
Re: Unpaved as a checkbox instead of road type?