[Talk-us] Motorway vs trunk

Dave Hansen dave at sr71.net
Fri Feb 26 20:55:53 GMT 2010


On Fri, 2010-02-26 at 15:50 -0500, Richard Welty wrote:
> On 2/26/10 3:14 PM, Nakor Osm wrote:
> >
> > What is the distinction made between trunk and motorways for tagging 
> > in the US. As an example should this portion of US41 ( 
> > http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=41.8967&lon=-87.6177&zoom=14 
> > <http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=41.8967&lon=-87.6177&zoom=14> ) be 
> > a motorway or a trunk?
> for all practical purposes, a trunk is a motorway-wannabe, but with 
> grade level crossings of
> some sort, either with stop signs for the lesser roads, or traffic 
> lights. you generally won't
> see driveways or businesses directly on trunks, there will often be 
> frontage roads for that.
> 
> the portion of US 41 you point out is a bit schzoid, mostly grade 
> separated but with a scattering
> of grade level crossings. the points with grade level crossings should 
> certainly be trunk.

Well, it's going to look goofy on the map to have dotted green and blue
lines.

I'd say that you also need to consider how long the segment is.  I have
a divided road with fences on both sides and limited access near my
house.  There's a 25ft stretch of it with limited access.  Is that a
motorway for 25ft?  ;)

I think that motorways need to be relatively long.  At least a number of
miles of solid motorway to *be* a motorway.

-- Dave





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