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

[Mark Wagner]

The classifications might be reasonable on the west side of the state,
but on the east side, there are some seriously questionable NHS
decisions:

* WA-127 is in the NHS despite seeing fewer vehicles per day than many
  driveways.  It's part of the network because it cuts the travel time
  from Walla Walla to Spokane by an hour -- but almost nobody goes from
  Walla Walla to Spokane, they go to the Tri-Cities, which are a
  hundred miles closer.
* WA-26 and WA-17 aren't much better.  WA-26 covers the Western
  Washington to Clarkston route, which almost nobody does; WA-17 at
  least has the excuse of being the route from Moses Lake to the
  Tri-Cities, but the rest of the state will take US-395 or I-82 if
  they want to get to the Tri-Cities.
* WA-20 is entirely missing from the NHS, despite being one of only
  five routes across the Cascades.

(There are also some interesting omissions in the Spokane urban area,
producing things like one-way roads to nowhere or a 500-foot gap
between the Sunset Highway and US-2.)

-- 
Mark

On Tue, 4 May 2021 15:41:09 -0700
Evin Fairchild <evindfair at gmail.com> wrote:

> Which state do you live in?
> 
> I find the NHS classifications to be pretty reasonable for my home
> state of Washington except in urban areas where they have recently in
> the past few years considered urban principal arterials to be part of
> the NHS, which is complete overkill IMO. I'd say that if a road is
> considered to be NHS but it's not a state or US highway, it should
> not be tagged as trunk.
> 
> On Tue, May 4, 2021, 3:33 PM Alex Weech <osmus at alexweech.com> wrote:
> 
> > I've always found the NHS classifications to be odd. I recently went
> > through roads in my area to see how the NHS classifications match
> > with OSM, and it ranged all the way from residential to motorway
> > (I've since changed the residential ones to tertiary). It seems
> > like in some places every road that has an exit from an interstate
> > highway is on the NHS, and in other places they pass over an
> > important road because it is too close to an interstate. I don't
> > know if they source from state recommendations or what they use,
> > but I'd recommend against using the NHS as anything more than
> > another data point for picking classifications in OSM.
> >
> > On Tue, May 4, 2021, at 6:10 PM, Evin Fairchild wrote:
> >
> > But the wiki clearly states that the trunk tag has to do with
> > importance rather than physical characteristics. The NHS defines
> > roads that are the most important. Heck, in most states the speed
> > you can drive on a divided highway is the same as on most straight
> > two lane roads.
> >
> > It's not classification creep to define the most important
> > non-freeway roads as trunk. If you have an authoritative source as
> > a basis for the trunk designation, you're not going to have to
> > worry about people tagging roads between two small towns as trunk.
> > You can simply explain to the person that that road isn't in the
> > NHS, politely ask them to change it back, and move on with your
> > life.
> >
> > -Evin
> >
> > On Tue, May 4, 2021, 2:55 PM Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 4:28 PM Evin Fairchild <evindfair at gmail.com>
> > wrote:  
> > >
> > > 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.
> >
> > I think it reflects the ground truth as it moves between expressway
> > and an ordinary highway.
> >  
> > > 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:
> >
> > Against this.  I think the existing practice, where trunk is
> > equivalent to expressways as they exist in the US: motorway-like,
> > but not quite there.  So like a single carriageway that is limited
> > and controlled access, or a dual carriageway that is a mix of
> > controlled and uncontrolled access and high speed, works
> > sufficiently well.  Plus do we really want to fall into the typical
> > American stereotype of exaggerating what we are on something like
> > this?  Let's avoid upward classification creep.
> >
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