[Talk-us] United States Roadway Classification Guidelines

[Nathan Edgars II]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:33 AM, Nathan Edgars II <neroute2 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> > The problem is that the
>> > European community has decided that the highway tags are shorthand for
>> > physical qualities that usually only exist in Europe.
>> I don't know about other countries, but in the UK the classification
>> has nothing to do with physical qualities; it's tied to a consistent
>> importance-based system assigned by the government.
>
> I didn't say anything about the UK government classification system. I was
> referring to the OSM highway tags (tertiary, secondary, primary, trunk,
> etc.). Those terms are specific to the UK and are shorthand for physical
> qualities that usually only exist in UK or Europe.

Huh? Those highway classification tags (other than tertiary) are used
for classifications that the UK government has made:
*trunk: primary route network
*primary: other A roads
*secondary: B roads
>
>>
>> > The suggestion I made
>> > in my first reply to this thread was that we use a separate tag to
>> > describe
>> > what the US government calls the way. This would allow us to make an
>> > interstate-only road map like the one that Google shows you or that you
>> > can
>> > obtain in paper from your state government.
>>
>> And what do you do for all the not-so-major roads that the US
>> government doesn't care about (anything not an Interstate or on the
>> National Highway System)?
>
> Those roads don't have a government classification, so they don't get a
> "classification" (or whatever it should be called) tag.
>
Have fun convincing anybody that anything not on the NHS is unclassified.