On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 11:12 AM Peter Elderson <pelder...@gmail.com> wrote: > > We're on the same page. The pavement and separations argument just > illustrates how local authorities may make the same distinction, and try to > regulate traffic and safety informally. So here, I can use this for the > classification, but in the next town it would probably not work.
We're stuck with the hierarchy, but it doesn't really work that well in most places other than the UK. In my area, there actually is a reasonable hierarchy that reflects the relative importance of routes: motorway - Interstate, US, and State highways that are dual carriageways with fully controlled access. (Some of the State Parkways fall in this category but are named and not numbered.) trunk - some few special cases where a multi-lane dual carriageway is only partially grade-separated from local traffic, or a 'super two' where a single-carriageway road is grade-separated from local traffic, with acceleration and deceleration ramps like a motorway. primary - my state designates most US Highways and some numbered state touring routes as primary secondary - other state touring routes, numbered and bannered. tertiary - state reference routes, or numbered and bannered county highways. State reference routes get an ´unsigned_ref=*´ since the only field-visible marks of the numbers is a roughly 20x20 cm sign showing the number and chaining. These markers have three four-digit rows rows and are next to impossible to read from a moving car. Many are collector roads that are prominently bannered, "TO NY 7", "TO US 20" etc. The lower classifications are harder. We have had many arguments about the boundaries, in rural areas, between 'unclassified', 'residential', 'service' and 'track'. When you get into the North Woods, New York has some public highways that are Pretty Darned Bad - I'm pretty sure that I've tagged a "highway=track abandoned:highway=tertiary surface=compacted tracktype=grade4 smoothness=very_bad" and decided, "No, I'm not driving my Forester on this before scouting ahead." On that particular road, there were indicia that would support any of the five classes from 'tertiary' to 'track'. I've also put reference numbers for the highway system onto 'highway=footway' - for roads that have been washed out or destroyed in rock slides, where the bannering indicates a numbered route, the actual route is marked with 'detour' signs, but the condition is semi-permanent because there's never funding to rebuild the road. There's actually a blazed long-distance hiking trail that follows some of these sections, so 'footway' is appropriate, but the sections I have in mind are impassable to anything on wheels. _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
