[Talk-us] Motorway vs trunk classification for RI-4 and US-1 in Rhode Island

[Kevin Kenny]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 6:05 PM Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 4:59 PM Evin Fairchild <evindfair at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Disagree with making RI 4 be trunk immediately south of the interchange
>> with Ten Rod Road. The road doesn't cease being a freeway immediately south
>> of the interchange and someone driving it would have no indication that
>> that road ceases to be a freeway until they get to the light at Oak Hill
>> Road. In fact there are two grade separations south of that interchange,
>> one over a railroad and another is an overpass over Lafayette Road.
>>
>
> And?  It still ends in an intersection past that.  Not a freeway.
>
>
>> So let's stick to our standard practice of ending a motorway at the first
>> at grade intersection.
>>
>
> And by "standard" you mean "bad practice introduced by NE2 contrary to
> existing practice prior to that".
>

There are cases where a freeway continues for some miles between the last
elevated interchange and the first at-grade crossing, and adheres to
Interstate standards (or nearly so) for nearly all of that distance. I'd
tend to continue 'motorway' up to about where the first sign warns that the
freeway is about to end (or, say, 3 km back, if I don't know where the
warning starts).  It seems pretty silly to downgrade to 'primary' just
because a driver will reach a grade crossing in twenty minutes.

I face a similar problem where I haven't yet corrected old, horrible,
tagging practice on Taconic State Parkway
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/400283.  For quite a portion of its
length, it is simply downgraded to 'trunk' in the immediate vicinity of
each level crossing. That's, in my arrogant opinion, Just Plain Wrong. What
I think it ought to be is:

- 'trunk' from the southern terminus through Stevens Avenue
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/254603498, at which point it merges with
Sprain Brook Parkway and becomes a freeway. I could live with making the
section between the last traffic light and the merge point a motorway_link
- 'motorway' from there to Peekskill Hollow Road, the exit before the first
at-grade crossing. It's been upgraded to a freeway in that section.
- 'trunk' beyond - all the way to the northern terminus.

I wouldn't trouble to upgrade to 'motorway' for, say, the section between
Miller Hill Road https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/49523502 and Carpenter
Road https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/110078601 because the parkway as a
whole in that region has a mix of elevated and at-grade crossings, and the
mere fact that there are three consecutive elevated interchanges (Miller
Hill Road, I-84, NY-52) doesn't really change its nature. (In addition to
having occasional level crossings, it has narrower shoulders, narrower
traffic lanes, and sharper curves than the Interstate standard would allow,
and its speed limit is no higher than 55 mi/hr (<90 km/hr) for its entire
length. Similarly, I wouldn't tag it as a motorway past a right-in,
right-out intersection (there are many).

It's definitely a trunk road - there are no traffic signals or stop signs,
and the grade crossing are all extremely minor local streets. (The Palmer
Road intersection, for instance, serves just three or four farms that would
otherwise be cut off from the highway network.)

I could live with it being a motorway again north of Rigor Hill Road,
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/20077198, the last grade crossing before
the Berkshire Spur.

I've held off trying to fix it, simply because that's not my usual local
mapping area and I don't know what definitions the Downstaters use.

--
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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