Road K296

On its Northern end, road K296 looks like a “normal” provincial road. But on its Southern end, it looks more like a jungle trail:

(larger photo: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/115557246 ).
Has anyone more information on the point where the state of that road changes?
By the way, I think many of the less important roads with provincial number are tertiary rather than secondary - they connect only a few villages with each other and / or to a major road; those roads are not important at a provincial level.

Been thinking that as well. Such state roads has lesser importance than what a secondary road should be.

Speculation: it may have been a proper road once, but it might been used heavily, by trucks and lorries. So the condition of the road deteriorates over time without urgent repairs.

I did the initial trace (from Bing), it appeared as a usual proper road. But sorry, I have no idea at all.

Looking at lower zoom levels, forest clearing took place nearby where there are hills - that’s from Bing as well. So, I suspect, lorries and trucks use that road to carry away e.g. logs and stuff. That may cause the road to deteriorate over time.

Perhaps the road should be “downgraded” to a 2nd or 3rd grade tracks. Leave a note for future reference as well. :slight_smile:

In the Bing imagery, I cannot see a change in the surface of the road - normally it’s easy to detect when a road surface changes from asphalt to some kind of unpaved. Google Earth images offer too little quality in that area.
I saw some places in Thailand - and also Malaysia - where a layer of dirt / gravel / pebbles was put over a bad asphalt road. Perhaps that happened also here just recently.
And perhaps it is asphalted again when the next mapper gets there…

Hmm… from my experience, such temporary fix is only for jalan kampung. I haven’t seen anything like you shared through the photo. Usually, let’s say for a two lane tertiary state road (like that one), major potholes are usually on one side of the road. Probably it happened, let’s say, in less than a year’s time. On top of that, I assume, that this road has seen seldom motorcar users.