[Talk-us] Recent Trunk road edits

[Jack Burke]

On Monday, September 28, 2020, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
Matthew and Paul, hang on!

I am *not* trying to say that the roads in question should be
highway=motorway (except for the part of Georgia 400 that is, in fact, a
motorway).  I *am* trying to say that they should be highway=trunk.  My use
of the term "freeway" to describe them was artistic in nature, to describe
how it feels actually driving on them.   That's all.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

-jack
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20200928/deffdfe2/attachment.htm>