[Talk-us] Historic 66 as highway=trunk in OK

[Joseph Eisenberg]

I don't have any local knowledge about old route 66 in OK, but I'd
like to address the use of highway=trunk in general.

I'm in favor of using a secondary tags like motorroad=yes and
expressway=yes, along with other details like lanes=, surface=,
maxspeed=, etc, to specify expressways, rather than using
highway=trunk for this.

Like the distinctions between primary/secondary/tertiary, trunk was
originally intended to describe the role of a road in the network.
While most trunk highways are divided and have more than 1 lane in
each direction in densely-populated areas, it's quite normal for to
have narrower roads as the main route between 2 cities, in
sparsely-populated parts of the country.

For example, US Hwy 101 is the main route connecting the cities (e.g.
Eureka) and towns along the coast of northern California. Right now
only some segments are tagged as highway=trunk. I would like to
upgrade all of it to highway=trunk, up to Hwy 199, where most traffic
leaves 101 and heads to I-5, at Crescent City.

The segments that are divided and wider can be tagged expressway=yes,
lanes=4, maxspeed=, etc, so if people want to render these differently
they can (routers are probably more interested in the number of
intersections, traffic signals, lanes, maxspeed, and surface, so the
expressway=* tag isn't really needed).

On 8/29/19, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 7:04 AM stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Paul, Hi Volker, Hi talk-us:
>>
>> The topic begs the question as to what such (usually very) old,
>> poor-condition (where they ARE poor) roads should be tagged (we limit
>> ourselves to US roads here because this is talk-us), and at what
>> granularity.  (Volker COULD do detailed tagging, but I hear loud and
>> clear
>> he prefers high-granularity tagging, as do I, though we all recognize how
>> tedious this can be).  And "old 66" is a quintessential example, many
>> segments are a century old or older:  it is known as "the Mother road" by
>> many.  BTW, many public agencies under the umbrella of Southern
>> California
>> Association of Governments are working on developing USBR 66 in
>> California
>> for cyclists (the route number choice is no coincidence as some
>> alignments
>> follow the old Mother road).  This was actually in OSM as an early
>> proposed
>> route, but was removed to conform to USBRS proposed route conventions.
>> If/as USBR 66 turns into a Caltrans (DOT) route proposal to AASHTO, OSM
>> will re-enter these data.  It makes sense to pay close attention to the
>> underlying infrastructure tagging (tertiary, surface, smoothness...) as
>> we
>> do so since these are important to cyclists.
>>
>
> So, the segment in question given in the example to me (I don't think the
> response was intended only for me, so I'm not quoting the whole thing) is
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14678570/.  OpenStreetCam has footage
> from November 2018 on it at
> https://openstreetcam.org/details/1305935/3747/track-info, showing it's a
> pretty typical Oklahoma expressway, 55 MPH speed limit for most of it,
> slowing towards its eastern end, and is currently a part of OK 66.
>
> I think a better argument for downgrading from trunk exists in Southern
> California if it hasn't been downgraded already.  There's some decent
> chunks east of Indio in San Bernardino County off the top of my head that
> were clearly constructed as trunks, have since left Caltrans inventory and
> are now county roads, and SB County has just let one side of the road rot
> off, running both directions undivided on the other (usually the former
> westbound-only carriageway, from memory, as last I drove it I was going
> eastbound, the center divider was on my right, and it looked like the other
> side hadn't been usable for at least a decade with weeds and huge cracks
> growing out of the abandoned carriageway).
>
> A case can be made for highway=trunk (for connectivity reasons) yet I do
>> resonate with "secondary at best" for such old, poor roads.  Tagging
>> highway=trunk is about as high a classification as the very best portions
>> of this road will ever get, and only on its highest-speed segments which
>> are divided.  This implies highway=tertiary (MAYBE secondary) where the
>> road is NOT dual carriageway, as highway=trunk in the USA means "with a
>> barrier or median separating each direction of traffic" (truly dual
>> carriageway).  Yes, it is appropriate to tag highway=secondary on some
>> segments, I believe these to be in the minority compared to tertiary
>> (which
>> likely makes up the majority of what remains of this route in many
>> states).
>>
>
> I could see secondary or tertiary for the non-expressway portions (though
> most of it is state highway, so that would be secondary at lowest for the
> parts that are currently part of state highways).  But it does have among
> the longest portions of still-extant expressway portions, mostly still in
> the state highway inventory here in Oklahoma.
>
>
>> I also say including a surface=* tag is important, so is a smoothness=*
>> tag (though that has its controversies) where this is known or meets /
>> falls below value intermediate (or so).
>>
>
> I think it's important to disconnect the idea of surface=* and smoothness=*
> from highway=* in most cases.  If surface and smoothness factored into it,
> that really opens up I 5 in Portland until relatively recently (like,
> before about 2013) to question it's motorway status, as it's 50 and 55 MPH
> speed limits being way too fast without damaging tires on the potholes or
> hydroplaning the ruts.
>
> Let's agree that simply tagging highway=trunk is often incorrect when dual
>> carriageways of highway=tertiary with accurate surface=* (and sure,
>> smoothness=*) tags would be much more accurate and preferred.
>>
>
> Eeeeh, that's gonna be a hard sell for the most part, most Oklahoma
> expressways are built like this as are parts of Interstate freeways, with
> the only real difference between the two being at-grade intersections and
> limited driveways (as opposed to getting to install driveways virtually
> anywhere you want on it).  Indian Nation Turnpike is a great example of
> this.  Save for being fully controlled access from the get-go meriting a
> motorway tag, it's of substantially the same design and in about the same
> condition as the expressway portions of 66.
> https://openstreetcam.org/details/1119877/3443/track-info
>
> When there's more driveways, it either narrows and becomes a boulevard
> (like US 75 does for a couple kilometers in Okmulgee,
> https://openstreetcam.org/details/1119877/803/track-info; or US 64 does
> entering Muskogee,
> https://openstreetcam.org/details/1366842/204/track-info)
> or frontages are added to wrangle driveway traffic with connections to and
> from the expressway and the frontage being closer in frequency to what you
> would get for driveways in somewhat rural expressways (for example, the
> George Nigh Expressway in McAlester,
> https://openstreetcam.org/details/48220/5369/track-info), or they get
> upgraded to a freeway (for example, Skelly Drive/Skelly Bypass in Tulsa,
> where the original drive's driveways, at least on properties that weren't
> bulldozed 8 years ago when the freeway was last widened, attach to the
> frontages, https://openstreetcam.org/details/53572/5864/track-info).
>