[Talk-us] Update on potential highway classification reform

Wed May 19 00:46:26 UTC 2021

The link below[1] is a picture of the A87 highway in the Scottish
highlands.  It's not Alaska, but it's one of the most remote parts of the
UK and is a trunk highway in the British system.  In the British
classification system (and in OSM generally), there is no requirement that
trunk roads have expressway-like characteristics, simply that they're the
most important non-motorway road in a particular area.

[1] https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/vLZ7XC6LZj9LZl9XentKrA

Here's another photo[2] from just down the road.  On the right you'll note
a mailbox and a gravel driveway leading to someone's house:

[2] https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/OAzXBq0zSXeicY8F50oXow

The British had no problem recognizing that the most important roads in a
remote area will be of a much lower physical quality than the most
important road in built-up areas.  And thus, a low zoom map of Scotland[3]
meaningfully shows the network of roads that exists, even though those
roads are of lower quality than what you might find in the cities.

[3] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=7/56.845/-4.166

Personally, I think it's perfectly fine that a "high importance" road in
Alaska looks different from a "high importance" road in New York City.

On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 8:17 PM Dave Swarthout <daveswarthout at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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