[Tagging] Clarification unclassified vs residential

[Richard Fairhurst]

Greg Troxel wrote:
> Finally, I'd suggest in the US treating unclassified and residential 
> as exactly the same in importance, because we have no real notion 
> of unclassified roads like the UK.

There is one de facto difference in the US, which is that
highway=unclassified means that someone has made the active decision to tag
the road that way, whereas highway=residential (numerically) probably just
means "this was class A41 in TIGER".

Therefore it's fair to assume that highway=unclassified in the US has a
similar meaning to elsewhere in the developed world - a minor road which is
not a significant through traffic artery, and which is paved unless
otherwise stated (by a surface= tag). highway=residential in rural areas of
the US, however, could mean anything from a drainage ditch via a faint
outline of a path to a three-lane tertiary that hasn't been retagged yet.

Richard



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