[Talk-us] Highway tagging sort-of-dispute

[Bradley White]

Hello, this is my first time posting to the mailing board so hopefully
everything goes smoothly. I have been a contributor in the Reno/Tahoe area
for a couple years now (theangrytomato) and I am looking for a little help
regarding a set of highway classification changes made by another
contributor who (I assume) is also in the area.

-- First, in Reno (http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/39.5104/-119.7862),
all the roads set to primary were downgraded to secondary. I probably had
more of these tagged primary then there should have been, but by my
understanding of the 'primary' tag in urban areas, there are a handful of
roads here that are clearly primary. McCarran (NV 659) for example, is 4 to
8 lanes, divided, 40-50 mph and has only one uncontrolled four-way
intersection on its entire length, and thus should be tagged primary. NV
445 north of McCarran should also be primary, since it is 55 mph for most
of its length and is faster, has more restricted access, and is more
trafficked than Sparks and Vista which it roughly parallels. The
Pyramid-McCarran intersection is one of the busiest intersections in the
entire region. I would also think that Virginia (BUS US 395) though its
entire length should be primary because it is the only continuous
north-south road in the area aside from the freeway, and is very heavily
trafficked relative to surrounding roads.

In urban areas, I would consider secondary to usually mean 4 lanes, 35
mph(ish), maybe divided maybe not, with not much in the way of access
control. Primaries are faster, more controlled and usually wider - more
important roads in the area than secondary. Under the scheme that this
contributor recently tagged the city with, there is no distinction between
these roads.

-- Secondly, in other areas, roads which were set to primary were then
upgraded to trunk in ways I find strange next to my understanding of what a
trunk road means in the U.S. I am under the impression that 'trunk' implies
that the road has some sort of high-performance element to it, in that if
the road is undivided, low-speed, and maintains access to all adjacent
properties, it cannot possibly be a trunk road, even if it is very
important in navigation. In Carson City (
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/39.1442/-119.7566), the US 50 & US 395
temporary route is tagged trunk despite that the road is 4 lanes undivided,
dropping as low as 25 mph and maintaining all adjacent access. It is a very
important road for navigation, and carries multiple US routes (at least for
now), but I cannot see it is anything but a primary road until US 50 splits
off up the mountain, after which both are pretty clearly 'trunk's. Tagging
this section primary shows that it is clearly an important route, but that
it is not really a high-performance road. Especially in Fairview's case,
once the rest of the freeway is built, it is clearly a secondary road.

-- Finally, I have a bit of concern with some weirdness and in some cases
sloppiness of these recent edits. In South Lake Tahoe, CA (
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/38.9292/-119.9700), the trunk tag
seems to start and stop arbitrarily at the end of the residential areas. I
could see the case being made that it is a trunk road up until it reaches
SLT since it is fast and relatively  unobstructed, but in town the road is
low speed, 4-5 lanes, undivided, maintains direct access to property, which
again says to me 'primary'. It is clearly the most important route, but has
no 'high-performance' elements other than lanes. The same thing happens in
Minden, NV (http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/38.9445/-119.7417), where
NV 88 is tagged as a trunk for a short length, as well as 395 through the
town despite being 25 mph with no access control whatsoever. Further south,
it seems like there was an attempt made to tag the rest of 395 as a trunk,
but this was done pretty haphazardly (
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/38.4479/-119.4355). I should also note
that, though you're not required to comment, none of these edits were
commented on for explanation. I have also attempted to contact this
contributor via message asking for some clarification, since I am not sure
what actually counts as a 'primary' under their reasoning, but it has been
two days with no response. This contributor has since made a number of
edits after I sent this, so I doubt I am going to see a response.

I don't want to get into a miniature 'edit war' flipping these tags back
and forth (the history on some of the segments of US 395 south of minden
show that it has gone between primary and trunk a number of times since the
creation of the way) since that is considered vandalism. I would like to
hear some more thoughts about this though. I know that 'trunk' is a pretty
vague term in the US, but under the assumption that it implies in some way
a 'high-performance motorway', I don't think it's being used correctly
here. I could be totally wrong though, which is why I'm asking for some
opinion about what to do here. Thanks for bearing with me, I know this was
pretty long.
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