[Talk-us] United States Roadway Classification Guidelines

[Nathan Edgars II]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:24 AM, McGuire, Matthew
<Matt.McGuire at metc.state.mn.us> wrote:
> This looks like coding for the map rather than mapping what’s on the ground.
> I understand that a highway’s importance to an area is relative to other
> highways in the area.  But that doesn’t mean a two lane at-grade highway
> should be coded the same in one area as a four lane limited access highway
> in another. Or perhaps there should be another tag for the type of road as
> experienced on the ground vs a state or national scale map.

We have those tags: lanes=*, width=*, etc. But there's no "on the
ground" definition of importance, and there's nothing wrong with
tagging correctly for the renderers. Classification has been
subjective from the beginning in the US, because there is no
consistent government-assigned classification.

(By the way, the four lane limited access highway would still be
highway=motorway (or highway=trunk if it has at-grade intersections).)