[Talk-us] Burlington, Vermont road classification
Andrew Guertin
andrew.guertin at uvm.edu
Thu Oct 18 21:48:39 BST 2012
Hi,
There are two active mappers in the Burlington, Vermont area, and we
disagree about how the roads should be classified, so we're looking for
more opinions.
The crux of the problem is the answer to the question: Which is more
important, outside/official classifications, or physical characteristics?
The tagging pages on the wiki don't really provide clarity on this
matter. For example, from [1],
> Almost all other U.S. Highways get highway=primary. A primary
> highway generally provides the best route (excluding motorways)
> connecting adjacent cities or communities
> Even where U.S. Highways connect only smaller communities, they still
> merit highway=primary
but
> Primary highways generally lack stop signs; however, stop signs may
> control major intersections in rural areas with low traffic volumes
> and occur rarely elsewhere.
The most notable example of this is North Willard Street[2]. It is part
of US Route 7, but as can be seen with Bing Imagery, it is narrow, made
narrower by street parking on both sides, and is controlled by stop
signs. Similarly, Main Street is part of US Route 2, but has many
lights, and does not even satisfy the "near the highest speed generally
allowed on surface streets" note about secondary streets.
Of note, there is in fact no path to get from US 7 south of Burlington
to US 7 north of Burlington without stopping at at least one stop sign,
except for the interstate. Should this imply that there just aren't any
major roads here?
We're especially interested in input from nearby states--the rest of New
England and northern New York, but of course anyone with an opinion
please chime in!
Thanks,
--Andrew
[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging
[2]
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=44.48388&lon=-73.20368&zoom=16&layers=M
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