[Tagging] Classifying roads from Trunk to Tertiary and Unclassified

[Paul Allen]

On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 at 22:10, Graeme Fitzpatrick <graemefitz1 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> In Australia, it's not uncommon for a Primary (& in some cases, Trunk!)
> road to be a single lane dirt road!, & it would be nice to be able to show
> them with the importance that they are to local residents of that area.
>

There appear to be two schools of thought on this.  One is that if it is
the only road between A
and B then it is a primary road, even if it's a single-lane dirt track.
The other is to adopt
a consistent country (or state, or region) wide classification, preferably
adhering to official
classification if there is any, which might mean that the only road between
A and B is a
secondary, tertiary or even quaternary road.

I favour the latter approach.  If there is only one single-lane track
between A and B then
it is obviously of importance to those in the area without it needing to be
emphasised by
a different colour.  Whereas rendering it as a primary road will mislead
some people
planning a cross-country trip into think it's paved highway all the way,
including the
final part of their trip from A to B.

I suggest that before you decide which approach best suits your country you
first check
if there is a governmental classification scheme of highways.  It appears
that, for Australia,
things are rather inconsistent across the states and territories and have
changed over
the years.  Nevertheless, alphanumeric designations are now common amongst
most
states and territories and the meaning of those designations can be found at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_in_Australia#Prefix_letters
After examining that, then make your decision as to whether or not the OSM
map ought
to reflect official designations or do its own thing.  And then discuss it
in whatever forum
Australian mappers use and see if you can get a consensus agreeing with you.

-- 
Paul
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