Lester Caine wrote: >> Hmm, that's not what I was going for. I was going for the >> "administrative designation" of the road (that is, M, A, B [I gather] in >> the UK, I-, US, [state abbrev] in the US) . In the US this is closely >> tied to who maintains it. In Europe it seems to be much more closely >> tied to its physical characteristics, and varies wildly from country to >> country. > > The basic problem is the lack of any clarity between countries on road > definitions. The 'designation' of a road adds little to knowledge of its > structure in the UK some main A roads have single lane passing places and 10 > MPH speed limits while others are much higher quality than most motorways. > Just keep the road designation as it reference number and then worry about > such things as 3 4 or 5 lanes each way without reference to 'different types > of motorway'.
But is there any easy/consistent way to determine whether a road is a "national route", "regional route", "county route" or something similar to that, in the UK? based upon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_road_numbering_scheme it seems to me that A roads correspond with a national route, and B with a regional route. From comments on the proposal, germany's "Bundesstrasse", "Staatsstrasse", "Kreisstrasse" (machine translation: "Federal street", "state street" and "circle street") -- at least the first two correspond very nicely, and the concept matches nicely overall. And a polish commenter says "There are four categories: * state, classes A, S, GP and sometimes G * voivodship, classes G, Z, sometimes GP * powiat (county), classes G, Z, sometimes L * gmina (commune), classes L, D, sometimes Z" Again, it fits very well (national/regional/county/local) Specific terminology for the third level isn't important, and if a level between region and county is found to be necessary somewhere (China?), that can easily be added. > > I don't think it applies so much elsewhere - but UK motorways have no > pedestrian access - does the same apply on any American routes? > Yep, same thing for interstates in the US. I'm not sure whether it's the case for the "almost motorway/interstate" situation. -Alex Mauer "hawke" _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk