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

[Paul Johnson]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 8:27 AM, Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com> wrote:

>
> Bradley White <theangrytomato at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > 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.
>
> This is messy.    As I have read the norms, primary is for US highwways,
> and secondary for state highways.  Then, classifications are adjusted
> based on importance, so that a state highway that is as important as a
> US highway (e.g MA 2 in massachusetts, which is as big a deal as US 20,
> if not more so, is tagged as primary).
>

True, but on the other hand, an eight lane city boulevard's probably going
to be considered a more major route than a two lane county road
intersecting it (or even parallel a few blocks over), even though the
network hierarchy would consider the county road more major.


> Just because a road has 4 lanes doesn't make it like a US highway.
>

Right, that's what the network tag on the route relation that the way
should already be a part of means.  (Have I mentioned yet, it's time to
kill ref=* on ways and go exclusively to relations for this information?)


> The root of the problem is that the view of what's important in the city
> is different than outside, and these have to sort of meet up.   Outside
> of cities, important roads take you from one place to another place, not
> across town.
>

In more rural areas, these do more or less line up.  Major cities tend to
be their own beast when it comes to this sort of thing.
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