Sorry to start another thread on this but I just had an exchange with another mapper here in Kansas that could use some more opinions.
I recently reclassified US 24 west of Manhattan, KS from trunk down to primary. NE2 had bumped it up to trunk a long time ago and I never felt that this was right and finally got around to changing it back. But tonight another user in Kansas commented on this changeset[1] saying that it should stay at trunk until it hits US 281 in western Kansas because it is classified as a "Principal Arterial" by the functional highway classification system (HFCS). And indeed, the HFCS page on the OSM wiki[2] does say that rural principal arterials should be tagged as trunk Now, I'm not necessarily opposed to taking some hints from an external source but my big problem with this particular case is that US 81 (which US 24 intersects, at [3]) is also tagged as trunk. I don't think this classification is disputed by anyone. But US 81 and US 24 are vastly different roads. US 24: two lanes, undivided, 65 MPH speed limit, narrow shoulders US 81: four lanes, divided by a 50 foot median, 70 MPH speed limit, 10 foot shoulders I'm pretty sure US 24 also has a lot more random driveways and farm access roads than US 81 although 81 does have some (and hence is definitely not eligible for motorway tagging) You can clearly see the difference between the roads in Mapillary. US 24[4] and US 81[5]. In my opinion, if these two roads are tagged with the same classification then something is wrong with the classification system. I'm not sure exactly what HFCS takes into consideration or who wrote that wiki page but this doesn't seem right to me. Can someone offer a defense of the wiki page or should it be changed? This user has also upgraded a lot of unpaved county roads in eastern Kansas to secondary because of HFCS which also strikes me as wrong. You can clearly see where he has done this at zoom level 9 [6]. As I noted in the changeset discussion, this led me to encounter a "Warning: road may flood" sign on a dirt road tagged as secondary which just seems crazy to me. Thoughts? Toby [1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/33282153 [2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Functional_Classification_System [3] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/39.3638/-97.6710 [4] http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/yTCyYGiyodDhje5mk4CRBQ/photo [5] http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/m3iNsipw17_jR0FJPWrcFQ/photo [6] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=9/39.1162/-95.5811 _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
