[Talk-ca] Proposed changes to road classification and related stuff

[Jherome Miguel]

Just created a draft page for BC highway classification. Some details:
- Trunk network will largely be the same as before, but with additions (up
for discussion, including Nicola Highway, remainder of BC 17 in Victoria
and Saanich Road between BC and BC 17, BC 19 between Campbell River and
Port Hardy, BC 49, BC 93 from the US border to Crowsnest Highway, BC 97
south of Osoyoos, remainder of BC 99 north of Whistler up to BC 97 near
Cache Creek)
- Motorway network for BC will be freeways (officially Schedule 1
highways). Some existing "islands" (usually short segments built to freeway
standard but with only one interchange, have RIROs or not signed as
freeways, i.e. parts of BC 1 in Yoho, parts of BC 97 in the Okanagan and
Prince George) can be downgraded and tagged with the same classification as
the remainder of the highway route but with expressway=yes.
- Primary network will mostly be the other provincial highways, plus some
Metro Vancouver major arterials that aren't signed as provincial highways,
and the connector between Fort St. John and Alberta Highway 64 (to ensure
continuity of primary from the Alberta side).

For Ontario, I have just prepared a list of trunk routes. This includes the
extant network, plus additions (e.g. Highway 40 between Chatham-Kent and
Sarnia, main roads leading to Owen Sound and Timmins). Expressways (not as
in the case of Toronto expressways or the E.C. Row in Windsor) will be
tagged by the relative importance of the route where it belongs (and not
with trunk) of the remainder of the route and with expressway=yes, like
with emerging practice in the US. Primary will also be set to significant
former provincial highways (e.g. former Highway 2 from Windsor to Cornwall,
former Highway 11 from Downtown Toronto to Barrie via Richmond Hill). Some
former provincial highways have already been tagged as such, especially in
the GTA.

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 2:57 PM Jherome Miguel <jheromemiguel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> After all, we're going after our friends south of the border (please see
> the wiki for the proposal background). While there's a more or less
> consistent application of trunk across the country (it's mostly NHS core
> routes), there's still this application of trunk to mean an expressway and
> there also goes the classification changes at the border (some of which has
> been addressed). Our American friends have been slowly doing away with
> trunk to mean such kind of roads, having moved to using the expressway=yes
> tag following discussions. To make things short, the proposal tries to
> coordinate with the changes already being made south of the border.
>
> For the trunk tag, well, it's quite used in two ways across the world, to
> either mean the most important roads that aren't freeway/motorway or a road
> in between an ordinary at-grade highway and a freeway. Most of the world
> follows the former, but the latter def is quite commonly used in most of
> Europe. In ours, it's quite a mixed bag, so is the United States before the
> 2021 revision.
>
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 7:33 AM Martin Chalifoux <
> martin.chalifoux at icloud.com> wrote:
>
>> I feel the same as you do John, and I also like the way it is right now.
>> So I would like to understand the issues they want to fix and I don’t get
>> it yet. As the saying goes, it if aint broken don’t fix it.
>>
>>
>> On Feb 8, 2022, at 09:28, john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I suspect it all stems from the roots of OSM.  A UK motorway is quite
>> different to a Canadian one and there has been lots of discussion about
>> classification of primary, motorway, trunk etc. in various countries.
>>
>> Personally I quite like the existing tagging and don't really see the
>> need to retag everything.
>>
>> It isn't clear to me what the advantage of retagging everything is.
>>
>> You loose the sense of local ownership if you move to standardised
>> tagging and in this case where it is not black and white I fail to see any
>> advantage.
>>
>> Cheerio John
>>
>>
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