[Talk-us] Recent Trunk road edits

[Paul Johnson]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 11:07 AM Matthew Woehlke <mwoehlke.floss at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 28/09/2020 11.42, Jack Burke wrote:
> > I'm willing to bet that most OSM editors who drive on either of those two
> > will think "this is a great freeway, just with occasional traffic
> signals."
>
> That's an oxymoron. Freeways are, by definition, limited access (no
> crossing intersections, period) and do not have (permanent¹) signs or
> signals to halt traffic. IMNSHO, if it has traffic lights, stop signs,
> or the possibility of vehicles suddenly driving *across* the way, it
> isn't a freeway.


True, but highway=trunk can mean either expressways (think like freeways
that have some or all at-grade intersections; note that having
freeway-style ramps in between junctions doesn't make it a
highway=motorway), or single-carriageway freeways.  In both cases, they
tend to get built as an incremental case to building a full motorway, but
are not yet motorways.

That's not to say there aren't non-interstate highways that meet these
> definitions.
>
> But... is it a highway=trunk? *I* don't see where the wiki excludes the
> possibility. (It does, however, seem to me that only *actual* interstate
> freeways should be highway=motorway in the US.)
>

That's not true at all...heck, not all sections of Interstates qualify for
highway=motorway, there's at least a couple dozen spots where this is true,
like pretty much any customs checkpoint, the transitions to where an
interstate ends and it continues as another kind of highway past the last
exit before a junction,


> Related: if it's I-## or I-###, shouldn't it be a highway=motorway,
> period? (Unless those, for some reason, are ever *not* freeways?)
>

No.  Very much not, in fact.  Network and classification are, relative to
the UK, quite disconnected.  Most of the Interstate network that is
bannered as Detour (more common in disaster prone areas where getting
around a freeway closure isn't obvious and yet happens frequently enough to
have permanently signposted detour routes for such occasions) or Business
tends to be trunk at most (I can think of a couple places where a Business
Interstate runs down expressway sections that used to be US 66) but usually
is *extremely* not a freeway (usually boulevards and two lane roads).  Get
up to Alaska and mainline interstates aren't freeways and usually aren't
even signposted (I'd be surprised if anything outside Fairbanks and
Anchorage warrants higher than a secondary tag realistically, but the US
loves to creep everything upwards, overstating connectivity).  Some cities
operate full blown freeways, some interstates are gravel barely-a-road.
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