[OSM-talk-be] Conventions of primary/secondary/tertiary

[Ben Laenen]

Kenny Moens wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 18/08/2009 13:24, Ben Laenen wrote:
> > The N286 is no longer a secondary road. The Flemish Region has given the
> > road to the municipalities (Haacht, Herent and Rotselaar), so it's no
> > longer the N286. A little bit of googling will direct you towards the
> > texts of the Staatsblad.
> >
> > But of course it takes a while before the road numbers are all gone on
> > the ground. Chances are there will still be some signs of the N286 in ten
> > years if you look at other cases of demoted N-roads. In order to give
> > future mappers a hint that the road is no longer secondary, I add the tag
> > "old_ref=N286" in these situations, because some other mappers will
> > likely make it secondary again and add the ref numbers again. But
> > experience tells me that they usually don't see the old_ref tag and will
> > make them secondary again nevertheless...
>
> Interesting fact, I personally didn't know that a road lost its national
> number if it was transferred towards the local govornments. In fact
> weren't there cases in the past where a provincial road had a national
> number? They barely exist nowadays since most provinces transferred them
> to the 'gewest' or 'city'.

And at least in Flanders, the last provincial roads are now in the process of 
being transferred to the Flemish Region or to the municipalities. I don't know 
if Wallonia has done the same.

Both provincial and regional roads have N-numbers btw. One N-road could have a 
provincial part, and a regional one. There's just that one case in Luxembourg 
where they use P-numbers for provincial roads...

But as soon as they go to the municipalities they lose that number. But it 
just takes a while before you see that on the road (kilometer signs will 
slowly vanish over time like they do on all roads, but they aren't replaced; 
and road signs aren't immediately replaced either, as the extra number doesn't 
really hurt). And some people will probably keep using the number anyway.


> Is there somewhere an official source from the government on which roads
> still have an official number? Until now I've found this document:
> http://www.wegeninfo.be/pdf/nummeringwegennet.pdf, but I believe its
> kinda outdated.

Yeah, it's outdated and sometimes not too accurate either...

I don't know any official source, though I wouldn't mind having one which is 
up to date :-) For now it's just googling for some information about each N-
road if you aren't sure of its current status and hoping to find something 
from a municipality counsel or from the Staatsblad.

Ben