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

[SK53]

Hi,

The OSM highway hierarchy has little to do with those used by highway
authorities across the UK. Current usage is now nearly 19 years old, and
has stood the test of time. It relies on features that the common road user
will see (green/white signs, A & B prefixes), not some classification in an
arcane government document.

I suggest that you search through the archives of this list for "trunk" and
you will find messages similar to yours going back at least 12 years. The
older replies are likely to be still relevant.

Regards,

Jerry

On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:37, yasslay <yasslayosm at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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