I now reiterate the fundamental struggle in this discussion (which can be summed up as "both"):
highway=trunk is another level of granularity (above primary) to describe "high performance OR high importance roads" (emphasis mine). Additionally, (from the US-specific definition from our wiki): highway=trunk is a "surface expressway: a relatively high-speed divided road (at least 40 MPH with a barrier or median separating each direction of traffic), with a limited amount of intersections and driveways; or a major intercity highway." Similar to "descriptive vs. prescriptive," this semantic "struggle" might be described as these two definitions being "relative vs. absolute." Some people say a gravel road (or even a dirt road, if that dominates, say, in a developing country) is important enough to be tagged "trunk," for example in Alaska. That is using "trunk" in its relative sense: relative as to what is also meant by primary, secondary, etc. IN THAT LOCAL/REGIONAL CONTEXT. Some people say "trunk must be divided with a barrier/median and medium-to-higher speed..." (or fill in some hand-waving additions). That is using "trunk" in its absolute sense. "Both." Yes, both. I'll say it again, OSM, I doubt it very much, will ever, EVER get away from how we now define "trunk" as "both." Look at our wiki and see how there are differing definitions for differing countries and see how we define it relatively. Look at our wiki's text and see how we define it absolutely. Both. Can we (as humans) and routers (as software) learn to live with this apparent dichotomy? I can. I believe the rest of us (humans and routers alike) can, too. SteveA California _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
