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

[Kevin Farrugia]

I'd be weary of mass changing classification of former provincial highways
to primary in the Golden Horseshoe - the provincial highways were
downloaded because they weren't seen as important to provincial movement,
having been superceded by 1 or more 400-Series highway.

In some cases, like former highway 7 in Brampton (Queen St E + Bovaird Dr
W) it makes sense because those roads see 50000 vehicles/day and millions
of $ in freight daily. But the original Hwy 7 from the 1800s (as shown in
Google Maps) that extends to Hwy 10/Main St/Hurontario makes zero sense.

I'd set some standards and allow local mappers to change it, especially in
active areas of the province, otherwise we're going to get low volume local
roads being converted for the sole reason for being a former highway and
not because of its importance in vehicle movement. They may be important
roads in the psyche or development of a city (Yonge St) but not all that
important in movement of goods/people on the road (Yonge St downtown, which
has been superceded by the subway).

-Kevin


On Thu., Feb. 10, 2022, 12:04 a.m. Jherome Miguel, <jheromemiguel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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