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

[Jarek Piórkowski]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2022 at 21:37, Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> This might be my Toronto-centricity speaking, but I'm having a tough
>>> time with Owen Sound being mentioned as a important regional
>>> population centre. It's the population of a mid-size neighbourhood.
>
> For comparison, New York's guidance was that trunks should link the 600 largest communities in the US, but this rule, uniformly applied, would lead to some results that we thought unacceptable.

Per capita, this would mean 28 communities in Ontario. Jherome's list
of Ontario communities connected to 400-series freeways or the NHS has
20 (depending on where you draw lines separating cities that flow into
each other), so it's in the right ballpark.

> Of course, a trunk road may serve to link cities in neighbouring jurisdictions.  Many CA/US border crossings in the East have trunk roads serving them because of population centres on the other side.  US 11 keeps its trunk status in northern New York because of its role as a link between US locations and trunk cities such as Cornwall, Brockville and Kingston, even though Massena and Ogdensburg would not rate such treatment. I'd presume that Route 133 in Québec would have the same sort of treatment because of its role as a link between Montréal and New England.

In Ontario, in practice these are part of the NHS and currently tagged
trunk, except for the Akwasesne/Cornwall crossing, city streets at the
Sault Ste. Marie crossing, and the situation in Ottawa where
interprovincial bridges are connected to city streets. So this mostly
aligns as well.

--Jarek