[Talk-us] US highway classification

Nathan Mills nathan at nwacg.net
Sun May 29 04:29:02 BST 2011


 On Sat, 28 May 2011 23:00:11 -0400, Anthony wrote:

> Instead of giving me hypothetical if..then answers, can you give me a
> straightforward answer?

 You're trying to get an exact answer to something that isn't an exact 
 science, so no. I'm allowing for the fact that there may be a situation 
 in which trunk should be applied to a two lane road because not doing so 
 would misrepresent the area to viewers of the map and routing engines 
 more than not using it would. I don't have personal experience with 
 every road in the US, after all. In the cases I've personally seen, I 
 think the roads could have been adequately described with primary.

 Obviously, my preference would be that trunk only be used for roads 
 with more than two lanes and a barely-existent shoulder, but barring 
 that I would like it to mean 'very important road that is not a 
 motorway.'

 And yes, as it presently stands, a routing engine would probably be 
 better off using the two foot shorter primary than the two foot longer 
 trunk, given that we have a bunch of roads tagged as trunk that are no 
 more suitable for long distance travel than most roads tagged as 
 primary.



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