Updates to 4WD and Motorized Trail Styles

[mtaylorlong]

I've been spending some time cleaning up the PT3 cartocss to pave the way for efficiently creating Imagery and Slate versions. In doing so, I've been working on roads to better align road widths between Places and OSM roads. This focus on roads shed light on some weaknesses in our handling of 4WD roads and motorized trails. I've made some updates that I'm sharing here for the sake of documentation.

In the current version of PT3 (3.0.1) 4wd roads and motorized trails are styled yellow. (this data is likely incorrectly tagged – it's just for example).

I'm not thrilled by the yellow because in our Places Mobile basemaps for HEHO, FOSM, and KLGO we're using yellow lines for all trails. It's okay that these maps are a little different, but I don't want to confuse people by having the same color meaning different things in different contexts.

I'm also concerned about the blurring of lines between 4wd roads and Motorized trails. In reality, it's not easy to separate these things, but we can at least make the styling rules more explicitly follow the logic of our Places presets.

My solution for 4wd roads and motorized trails

• No more yellow anything.
• 4wd roads are styled like unpaved roads.
• Motorized trails are styled like other trails, but with a white casing underneath to make them look like a mashup of a road and a trail.

  4wd roads

4wd roads are a special thing in some parks, but we can't make special rules for every special feature. In my opinion, the closest thing to a 4wd road is an unpaved road, and both will now look the same in PT3: a regular white road fill with a dashed, darker-gray casing.

Motorized trails

Motorized trails (for atvs, dirt bikes, etc.) are really a kind of trail, that's why they belong in the superclass 'trail' and not 'road'. As such, these trails will display with the same green dashed line as any other trail. To indicate that they are motorized trails, I add a white casing underneath that make them look almost like a road with a trail on top of it. Since these trails are sort of a hybrid of a road and a trail, combining both symbols in this way makes sense to me.

@jakecoolidge, @nateirwin, @cwlawlis802, @jimmyrocks: Questions, comments, concerns?

[jakecoolidge]

Generally, I really like the move to disentangle 4wd roads from motorized trails. I think I can commit to removing the yellow. The yellow doesn't bother me too much, but I think fewer colors is always preferable, especially on a general-use basemap. The current yellow is a bit of an unnecessary attention-grabber.

For comparison, here's how I'm handling 4wd roads in the CAHA basemap. I'm following HFC to a certain extent, but both the case and the fill are dashed, and the fill has just a hint of yellow:

When viewing on a screen, my sense is that dashing both the fill and the case helps distinguish it a bit more from conventional roads.

With regards to motorized trails, the dashed trail line over a road-like thicker white line will take a little getting used to for me. It looks like a trail running down the middle of a conventional road. It might be visually busy, but can you dash that white case too? It needs...something. I'll think on it.

[mtaylorlong]

Good points @jakecoolidge. I like your 4wd trail better than mine. I also think I agree with your criticism of the motorized trails. Want to brainstorm a better solution today?