[Talk-us] Another road classification disagreement (this time with HFCS in Kansas)

[Paul Johnson]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 6:59 AM, Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com> wrote:

> Unpaved does not at all imply track.  If it's a real road, open to the
> public, with a name, and expected to be used by normal vehicles, it's
> not a track.  track is about something that is physically less than a
> proper (even unpaved) road.


I don't generally disagree with that, though there's often an overly
optimistic estimation about what a normal vehicle can traverse,
particularly in counties with basically no budget.  Abject neglect plays a
big factor with many unpaved section lines.  Heck, there's parking lots at
Roman Nose State Park that are notorious for breaking CV joins and oil
pans, and they're still expecting "regular vehicles" to use them (I've had
to park there with a Chevy Malibu and broken two CVs and got it high
centered once; and there's plenty of county roads I've had to traverse on
the job that I've got the same Malibu stuck so bad I've had to dig a bigger
hole to ramp out of it).  We're talking stuff that's on the public
inventory as either a destination (Roman Nose) or through route, ostensibly
there for your average midsize sedan, that just plain isn't well maintained
enough to be a practical (or sometimes even possible) option without it
being a last resort (risking getting stranded/severe damage/impassable) in
the normal course of practicing reasonable caution with someone who knows
what they're doing out there kind of situations.  Not necessarily like
Columbia County-end of Sauvie Island bad, where the roads just suck but at
least they're graded and graveled and you can do 40 on it without much
consequence, but more like Creek County, Oklahoma 30% grades with washouts
and no drainage type thing (and yes, I did actually live on such a "how is
this even road?" type tracks for a couple years).

With respect to 'expressway', I would suggest that expressway is not a
> useful term, because there is no agreed-on meaning.  The definition of
> trunk is usually something that is fairly high speed (50 MPH ish),
> mostly divided, and doesn't have that many at-grade intersections and
> driveways.   Usually trunk roads feel like things are sort of heading to
> being like interstates, but really aren't.
>

That's more or less the AASHTO definition right there. If it's partially
controlled and has a relatively high speed limit, that's pretty much
textbook AASHTO expressway.  Similar to how I view the WA 500 situation in
the City of Fort Vancouver, WA as well.

And definitely roads that are not interstates get tagged motorway, if
> they meet the standards completely.  An example is Mass 2 inside 128 and
> From just inside 495 west for many miles.  This is divided, on/off-ramps
> only, no lights, no rotaries.  However, there is a section in between
> that's mostly divided, with a light every few miles, and a few driveways
> for businesses (but only 2 business driveways per mile, mostly).  It's
> posted 45 and people go 60.  This feels like classic trunk, almost a
> textbook definition.
>

I agree with the tagging there looking at the aerial, since I presume
you're referring to Elm west of the Concorde Turnpike, and Cambridge
Turnpike east of Crosby's Corner (though it should be "MA" and not "SR", as
this helps orient people through disambiguation and some renderers using
shields that aren't route relation aware yet depend on a state postal
abbreviation for state highways to disambiguate it from another more minor
network).
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