[talk-au] Highway Tags

[Brent Easton]

Hi Ian,

>> We only have 4 levels of 'significant' roads available that are
>> highlighted on the map. How do we best apply that to Australian
>> conditions? If you split off Auslink roads as a special case, you
>> really need 5 levels to keep the breakdown we have been using already.
>
>Well we have five.
>
>Trunk/Primary/Secondary/Tertiary/Unclassified.

Unclassified is not 'highlighted' on the map.

>If we use them to correspond to NH/A/B/C/Other then it follows quite
>intuitively.


I would be happy to do this if there was another level of road below tertiary that was highlighted on the map.

>I guess also, at the top end of the scale, it may be quite important to
>know what is a trunk road.  If you are travelling from Sydney to Melbourne,
>you want to know that the Princes Hwy is not a trunk, even though it is
>primary.
>
>However, I'm happy to accept what you point out as the reality of the
>situation, and that is that most roads are not going to have any sort of
>classification in NSW for the forseeable future, and to end up with many
>roads that go somewhere thrown together with many roads that don't in the
>unclassified bucket is probably not going to make it any easier to find
>your way somewhere.


Yes, that is exactly the point. There are two roads from Town A to Town B, which one should I use? Currently, I have one marked Secondary ( the 'main' road) and one marked Tertiary (the 'back' road). Neither road is ever likely to get a Alpha rating. We would completely lose that level of definition.

You are looking from the top down, whereas I am looking from the bottom up. More people are likely to know that the Princes Highway is not the best road to Melbourne, than will know that Road 1 is the best road from Town A to Town B.

I think of the levels as:

 - Large,  zoomy roads
 - Big,  main roads
 - Medium, useful roads
 - Small, interesting roads
 - Other, boring roads

Cheers,
Brent.
____________________________________________________________
Brent Easton                       
Analyst/Programmer                               
University of Western Sydney                                   
Email: b.easton at uws.edu.au