> Primary highways generally lack stop signs; however, stop signs may > control major intersections in rural areas with low traffic volumes > and occur rarely elsewhere.
The most notable example of this is North Willard Street[2]. It is part of US Route 7, but as can be seen with Bing Imagery, it is narrow, made narrower by street parking on both sides, and is controlled by stop signs. Similarly, Main Street is part of US Route 2, but has many lights, and does not even satisfy the "near the highest speed generally allowed on surface streets" note about secondary streets. My take from dealing with this (around Mass): If it's a US highway, then it's highway=primary, period. A US highway is important simply by virtue of being designated US highway. Note that speed limits etc. should be tagged, so routing is not just on classification. But I don't know anywhere where a US highway is not important in terms of cultural/transportation geography, even if it isn't the first choice for long-distance travel (e.g. US1 and I95 are in similar places, and long-haul traffic uses I95, but US1 is still a very important road culturally, and in many cases it is more meaningful, because I95 is merely a way to get from here to ttere, and not more). In many areas, US highways have stop signs or lights. That's life. US7 in downtown Burlington is probably like this, but that doesn't make it not one of the most important roads. Note that primary is a UK word, and it doesn't really map to US practice. If it's not a US highway, and it's important enough to be on a par with a US highway, it can be tagged primary. But, if you're doing this, and the road has lots of stop signs, that's a clue that you may be overclassifying. An example of something that isn't a US highway that deserves primary is Mass 2, which is *the* main east/west road in the northern half of mass. An example in vermont that's kind of iffy is 100. I see parts of it are primary, and parts of it secondary. As a non-local who's driven it only a few times I have no basis for questioning local judgement. But I would tend to think that 100 is more important than most other NS roads that aren't US5 and US7. But, the other state roads that 100 are more important than should be secondary, so it's really in between primary and secondary and thus a tough call. US7 should really be primary. Even if it's slow in cities, it's the main road where it goes (I89 aside, and generally the 'is it primary' test discounts interstates). I am assuming that if you are in Shelburne and going to Colchester (and we stipulate that interstates are unusable), you'd drive on 7, including North Willard street. Or at least someone not really familiar with the area would. Is that off base? I've seen a distressing tendency to overclassify roads, especially in cities, where random streets that are used *only within the city* are secondary. My take is that if a road wouldn't likely be used by someone who is traveling 20 km, then it's funny for it to be secondary - a secondary highway should actually go somewhere. The other argument, that I don't subscribe to, is that this should be population-based, not distance based.
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