[Tagging] Road classification

[Mateusz Konieczny]

On Wed, 02 Sep 2015 06:54:04 +0900
John Willis <johnw at mac.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> > On Sep 1, 2015, at 9:46 PM, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > presently traverses a staircase!
> 
> I currently forget which, but a national road in Japan officially
> becomes a staircase near its terminus, as the government managed
> "road" is significant older than cars, and for historical reasons,
> the staircase is legally considered part of the road. 
> 
> There are some national primary/trunk roads that have a modern
> tertiary bypass, but the 200 year old primary bypassed section that
> goes down a "toboggan route" down a mountain or narrows to less than
> 2 meters is still considered the primary/trunk route for the same
> reasons - which is a real pain to reconcile. 

From this it sounds like this tagging in OSM is relying too much on
official classification rather than on real road importance.