[Talk-GB] Inconsistency in the classification of roads on OSM across the UK

[yasslay]

Hello everyone,

As the title says, I've noticed an inconsistency of how roads are
classified on OSM across the UK. For example, the criteria for the
highway=trunk tag is different for roads in England and Wales (primary A
roads) than Scotland (actual trunk roads). I also find this to be quite an
issue as the OSM Wiki page (
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Roads_in_the_United_Kingdom) for the
topic says that "A-roads with primary status (signed yellow on green)"
should be tagged such highway=trunk, and I couldn't find any relevant
documentation which excludes Scotland from this rule. I'm not sure if this
was discussed previously either, however I think this should be discussed.

Another issue I have with this is that the highway tags we use in OSM for
roads conflict with the official definitions of roads in the UK, i.e.
primary A/B roads are mapped as trunk roads on OSM and secondary A/B roads
are mapped as primary/secondary respectively. While I imagine that this is
to represent the higher importance that secondary A roads have, it just
feels weird to tag roads like this. *This isn't as pressing as an issue and
is more of a question if anything, but something which I think could be
discussed.*

Finally, another small issue I have is the lack of distinction on what the
road hierarchy is like when a non-motorway road, i.e. a primary A road
becomes a secondary A road after a junction, i.e. this road by Hull (
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/78374769) and this junction near
Liverpool (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/878439064). While I think that
these transitions should be mapped like the former, this is again not as
important an issue as many other things, but something I feel could be
discussed.

Kind regards
yasslay
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