[Talk-us] US highway classification

[Nathan Mills]

 On Sat, 28 May 2011 20:54:07 -0400, Nathan Edgars II wrote:

>> You described your criteria, but did not explain how trunk is more
>> appropriate than primary for a two lane rural highway between two
>> small-to-tiny cities. If you use trunk for that, there is no way to
>> describe (in a way that shows up on the tiles) a road which is not a
>> motorway but is better than the typical rural highway.
>
> There are many types of roads that it's not possible to describe. How
> do you tag an unpaved classified road so the map shows that it's
> unpaved (this is very common in the third world, but also occurs in
> extremely rural areas of the US)? You don't.

 Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, my friend. It's 
 nonsensical to say that just because there are other roads that can't be 
 adequately described (few and far between in my experience, but perhaps 
 more common out west than I'm aware) we should waste trunk on US 
 highways that could be adequately described with primary.

>>
>>> I also upgrade major state-numbered highways from secondary to
>>> primary. This leaves more breathing room in secondary and tertiary 
>>> for
>>> the lesser roads.
>>
>> As makes sense if the highway is the most direct non-Interstate,
>> non-trunk route between two regionally important cities. Why would 
>> trunk
>> be used for the same thing? That's what I've been trying (apparently
>> rather poorly) to get at.
>
> I understand your assumption - that trunk is only to be used for
> surface expressways. I simply disagree.

 So you continue to assert that trunk is most useful if it essentially a 
 duplicate of primary?

 Take, as an example, US 84 in western Alabama. Why on earth did you 
 change it to trunk when it's a terribly substandard road that isn't even 
 a major route between cities of any real size? The westernmost couple of 
 miles in Alabama were being upgraded last I was there, but the rest of 
 it from Elba on west is pretty bad, excluding the bypasses, of course. 
 There is no reasonable standard that could have it classified the same 
 as 231 between Dothan and Montgomery or even 280 between Birmingham and 
 Columbus, GA, now that it's almost 100% upgraded and almost all of the 
 towns are bypassed. It makes zero sense to a user of the map. (of which 
 I count myself..I've been eating my own dog food for a few years now, 
 which is why I care in more than an abstract way)