[Talk-us] Update on potential highway classification reform

[Dave Swarthout]

Hell, the highway classification situation in Alaska drives me nuts. A few
years ago, someone came along and promoted all the Primary highways in
Alaska to Trunk because they connect major population centers. But these
highways have no other characteristic required of a trunk road. They are
not dual carriageways, have hundreds of driveways, cross streets, traffic
signals and RR grade crossings.

Good luck with getting this all worked out.


On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 3:08 PM Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 1:47 PM Russell Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 5/17/21 5:54 PM, Brian M. Sperlongano wrote:
>> > State-specific criteria have been drafted so far for: MA, MS, NH, RI,
>> > VT, TX, and WA.
>> >
>> > In order to demonstrate what the new classification would look like on
>> > the map, the New England mappers have put together a temporary live
>> > demo[2] which shows what this new arrangement would look like at the
>> > motorway and trunk level.
>>
>> This looks tolerable. I wonder how it would be applied in NY? There are
>> several dead-end trunk roads. This seems wrong to me. Also, the entirety
>> of the Adirondack Park is empty, which doesn't work for any community
>> north of the park.
>
>
> The definition of 'trunk road' still appears to be 'main route between
> regionally important population centers'.  What is 'regionally important'
> in northeastern New York will depend, I suppose, on what granularity you
> consider for 'region'.  I suspect that OSM intends 'region' to be something
> along the lines of 'United States' if not 'North America', rather than
> something like 'Saint Lawrence County'. For that reason, I've been doing
> some rough sketches (nothing in Brian's server yet) of what the network
> might look like in eastern NY. In order to have a reasonably broadly
> applicable definition of 'population center' I've been using 'incorporated
> community or CDP > 25k inhabitants' (something of an arbitrary cutoff).
>
> It makes sense to me that there are no trunk roads inside the Adirondack
> Park apart from the Northway. There's nothing in the park for a trunk to
> serve. Are Tupper Lake, Ticonderoga, Dannemora, Saranac Lake/Harrietstown,
> or Lake Placid/North Elba 'population centers?"
>
>  I'm finding that even on the north side of the park the population
> centers that would define the trunk roads are pretty far apart: Watertown,
> Orrawa, Cornwall, Montréal, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Burlington.  (I
> haven't dug deep into the populations of lesser towns on the Canadian side
> to see if anything else pops up.)
>
> If we use 'part of the main route joining communities >25k population' as
> a working definition of 'trunk', then a few corner cases pop up: NY8,
> inside the park, appears so that Burlington will be linked with Utica, for
> instance.  There appears to be no 'main route' between Cornwall and Utica;
> I'm not all that comfortable with promoting minor county roads into trunks!
> You're nearer to there than I am - how _do_ you connect Cornwall with
> anywhere else?
>
> If we go by FHWA classifications, NY30 and NY3 appear at least in part,
> but NY8 disappears. The suburban arterials of NY85 and NY32 would end in
> Bethlehem, because there's no 'population center' beyond there for them to
> serve.
>
> I think it's entirely acceptable for trunks to dead-end where the reason
> for their existence ends. Thus, NY27 would be a trunk into Southampton
> (population >25k) but downgraded past there because there's no longer a
> large community beyond that.  The key thing is that we shouldn't have
> isolated islands of trunk roads appearing and disappearing simply because
> physical characteristics aren't up to spec on short sections.
>
> Going with a tighter definition of 'population center' starts giving
> perverse results in both New York and New England.  For instance 'any
> county seat is a population center' promotes some Vermont villages of <1000
> inhabitants, and in northeastern New York has the effect of promoting
> Plattsburgh, Elizabethtown, Malone, Lake Pleasant, Lowville, Canton and
> Fort Edward - and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with declaring any of those
> communities to be a 'regionally important population center!'  Sorry,
> Potsdam, but at least you get to keep US 11 (because it joins Burlington
> with Watertown).
>
> We're still struggling with the density extremes of the Big City and the
> Big Woods, so your input is welcome!
>
>
> --
> 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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>


-- 
Dave Swarthout
Homer, Alaska
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Travel Blog at http://dswarthout.blogspot.com
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