Proposal:Surface Quality
| Surface Quality | |
|---|---|
| Proposal status: | Abandoned (inactive) |
| Proposed by: | Zverik |
| Tagging: | surface:grade=* |
| Applies to: | 
|
| Definition: | Improved and universal quality marking |
| Statistics: |
|
| Rendered as: | Depends on a renderer, nothing by default |
| Draft started: | 2011-05-24 |
Summary
There hasn't been a clear way to mark road surface quality, so that values are as objective as possible (given the subjective nature of surfaces of course). This can be archieved by minimizing the list of possible values. Here we suggest using a surface:grade tag with only four values: 0, 1, 2, and 3, from worse to best quality.
Note: most of this page was translated from Russian.
Reasoning
Tag smoothness=* have existed forever. People have tried make its values clearer many times, and still nobody gets them, it's too vague. This new tag fixes its shortcomings:
- Numeric values do not leave space for typos ("intermediate").
- Very limited options divides categories better, allowing for reasonable qualifying ("horrible" or "very_horrible"?).
- Surface quality depends on the surface type (perfect gravel road is "bad"?).
Obviously extreme values 0 and 3 are reasonable archievable and mean the same for all surface types.
Tagging
It should be clear just by looking at an example:
surface=asphalt surface:grade=3
For every value of surface=* the corresponding surface:grade=* gradation is introduced with values ranging from 0 (very, very bad) to 3 (excellent). Their meaning is, briefly:
| surface:grade | Description |
|---|---|
| 3 | Excellent quality, some minor faults may be present, but they don't affect driving comfort. |
| 2 | Quality is good enough for car, but cycling is not pleasant. A driver must be prepared for anything. |
| 1 | The road is drivable, but not at maximum permitted speed. There are places where a driver must slow down. Driving in car is not comfortable. |
| 0 | The worst quality, road is hardly drivable even on 4WD. Lots of holes, branches and such. Speed is minimal. |
Of course, for different surfaces quality is measured differently. Below are documented grades for most used ones.
asphalt
| surface:grade | Description | Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Smooth surface with no or parallel faults. | |
| 2 | The surface is smooth, but with perpendicular faults, for example, between concrete blocks on which asphalt was laid. Occasional holes, easyly spotted at a distance. Possible колейность. | |
| 1 | Definitely not fresh asphalt layer. Lots of holes, some of which can be spotted only after driving in them. | |
| 0 | It is asphalt only by name. It can be spotted here and there, but mostly it is holes, sand, gravel and other stuff, a driver should proceed very carefully and at a minimum speed. |
concrete
Also suitable for concrete:plates and concrete:lanes.
| surface:grade | Description | Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 1 | ||
| 0 |
compacted
| surface:grade | Description | Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 1 | ||
| 0 |
gravel
| surface:grade | Description | Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 1 | ||
| 0 |
ground
Also suits values of grass, sand, mud, earth, dirt. Tag value should probably be more generic (unpaved:grade?).
| surface:grade | Description | Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 1 | ||
| 0 |
Examples
See Also
- smoothness=*
- 4wd_only=yes
- Proposed features/Surface:all weather
- Proposed features/surface unification
Comments
Please use the Talk Page for discussion.
Voting
Will probably never happen. This page documents the tagging style the author uses, but it won't be approved because there are many other schemes for marking road quality.