[Talk-us] Mass Change of Highway Classification in Larimer County Colorado

[Evin Fairchild]

I'd say it's pretty well connected given the terrain. In Colorado, there
are several east-west roads across the Rockies aside from I-70. These roads
are generally pretty straight and fast, something that can't be said for
many roads in the Appalachians (aside from the ADHS corridors), and that
contributes to the isolation of much of Appalachia.

Personally, I'm in agreement with Brian that continuity is important. I
find it kind of visually jarring when roads change back and forth between
trunk and primary when they switch between being divided to undivided.

It seems that the trunk thing keeps coming up over and over again and we
can never come to an agreement over what roads should be tagged as trunk.
So I would like to propose that we tag as trunk any road that is part of
the National Highway System, which is a network of roads that includes the
Interstate Highway System as well as other roads that are "important to the
nation’s economy, defense, and mobility." See link below:

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/national_highway_system/

I'd suggest you guys all take a look at the maps they have posted on the
FHWA's website and let me know if you think these seem reasonable for your
state. I like this because it's an authoritative source. Canada also has a
National Highway System which is used to determine which roads in OSM are
tagged as trunk, so there is precedent in OSM for using a
government-defined network to determine what roads are trunk.

-Evin

On Tue, May 4, 2021, 1:46 PM Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:

> On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 3:00 PM Brian M. Sperlongano
> <zelonewolf at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 2:34 PM Clifford Snow <clifford at snowandsnow.us>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I was asking myself that very question. In basic terms I don't think
> traffic count shouldn't be the only determination. Road width, lanes, state
> classification, shoulder size, markings, etc. could all help determine
> classification. Personally I tend to pay a lot of attention to how the
> state/county classifies the road. Typically higher classification roads are
> better than their lower classification counterparts. And yes they may have
> higher traffic counts but there are other reasons why the state may build a
> higher classification road, such as its importance to commerce.
> >
> >
> > We should also consider continuity.  It is not helpful if a road is
> constantly shifting between highway classifications, because renderers use
> that to decide which zoom level roads appear at.  If you look at many areas
> of the US at certain zooms, many roads are practically rendered as dashed
> lines because of frequent classification changes.  Classification should be
> a measure of relative importance and not strictly tied to physical
> characteristics.
>
> There's also overclassification.  The western US looks a lot more
> contiguous than it is thanks to a lot of false trunks and primaries
> that should be one step lower.  The western US particularly through
> the rockies just isn't that terribly well connected.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-us mailing list
> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20210504/c2741fef/attachment-0001.htm>