[Talk-us] Update on potential highway classification reform
brad
bradhaack at fastmail.com
Wed May 19 03:04:23 UTC 2021
That road connects to a town of about 2000. That really seems like a
stretch for a trunk road. In my read of the wiki, it doesn't pass.
From the wiki: "Trunk- The most important roads in a country's system
that aren't motorways. (Need not necessarily be a divided highway.) "
Even if it's the only one in the area, it isn't one of the most
important roads in the country.
Secondary at best. wiki: "(Often link towns)"
Maybe it's a bad example
On 5/18/21 6:46 PM, Brian M. Sperlongano wrote:
> 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
> <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
> <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
> <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 <mailto: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 <mailto:kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 1:47 PM Russell Nelson
> <nelson at crynwr.com <mailto: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
> <http://dswarthout.blogspot.com>
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