[Tagging] Basic question about functional classification of highways

[Pieren]

On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 4:00 AM, Fernando Trebien
<fernando.trebien at gmail.com> wrote:

> For several applications, such as navigation software, a distinction
> would be very interesting, allowing the display of rural primaries and
> secondaries when zooming out, a more accurate speed guess when the
> maxspeed tag is missing (based on these tables, which seem to assume
> that the urban/rural boundary is mapped using a place=* tag, perhaps
> an old idea: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_tags_for_routing/Maxspeed).
> The only benefit I can see of mixing the two classification systems
> into a single system is not being required to duplicate a rendering
> rule.

If you tag differently urban roads and rural roads, where is the
difference between using two "highway" values or simply two "maxspeed"
values on the same "highway" ?
Btw, I never understood why the "maxspeed=<countrycode>:<zone type>"
was not simply a "maxspeed=<zone type>" since OSM is a spatial db and
knows in which country the way is.

Pieren