<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><div>But - what percentage of local traffic or through traffic ends up on those roads? It's relative importance that matter. If you need to go through an area - what do you take?<br><br>Same concept applied to city labelling - look at a globe some time. It's not unusual to see "Thule, Greenland" labelled, or "Iqaluit, Nunavut". Why? Because they're the most significant towns in the area - even though they have tiny populations.<br><br>On the other hand - what about San Jose, CA, 10th biggest city in the US? They always label San Francisco first - even though San Jose is bigger, with a million people. It's perceived importance.<br><br>-Alan (self-conscious resident of San Jose)<br></div><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br><div
style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Karl Newman <siliconfiend@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Joseph Scanlan <n7xsd@arrl.net><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cc:</span></b> talk-us@openstreetmap.org<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:04:44 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Talk-us] Road classification<br></font><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 9:49 AM, Joseph Scanlan <span dir="ltr"><<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:n7xsd@arrl.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:n7xsd@arrl.net">n7xsd@arrl.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Tue, 16 Dec 2008, Alan Brown wrote:<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
This is the way I like to think about it - if you're zoomed way out, a map of motorways and trunk roads alone is best: plenty of useful information, but not cluttered.<br>
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This philosophy helps justify what you'll find here in the desert south west. For example, US 93 is pretty much the route one takes from Ely, through Caliente, to Las Vegas, Nevada. About 260 miles of that is two lane road. It's marked as highway=trunk not because its some grand highway along the eastern edge of the state but because it is *the* highway along the eastern edge of the state.<br>
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US 95 through California (about 100 miles) is another example. Traveling from Las Vegas to Quartszite or Yuma, Arizona state route 95 is a good alternative but if a routing program insisted on Interstates one would find oneself going through Phoenix or Los Angeles. Kind of a long way to go.<br>
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I should defend both highways by pointing out they don't see much cross traffic. ;-)<br>
</blockquote></div><br>They probably don't see much through traffic, either...<br><br>Karl<br>
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