[Talk-us] United States Roadway Classification Guidelines

[Nathan Edgars II]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:10 PM, Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 6:35 PM, Nathan Edgars II <neroute2 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> 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
>
> So you agree with me.

Nope. The UK government classifications have nothing to do with
physical characteristics.

>> >> > 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.
>
> They can still be tagged with other things, but they shouldn't be tagged
> with NHS tags.

Agreed. They can be tagged with highway=* tags, just not NHS=*.