[Talk-us] Update on potential highway classification reform

[Brian M. Sperlongano]

Anthony - thanks for this fascinating bit of Interstate trivia.  I was
totally unaware about these cases.  I found a comprehensive list of
exceptions on Wikipedia, and there's far more than I realized:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gaps_in_Interstate_Highways#At-grade_intersections

Would we be okay with something like:
- Downgrading a section of Interstate to trunk for all cases on the "Major
at-grade intersections" and "Other at-grade intersections" list
- Retaining motorway for all cases on the "minor at-grade intersections",
"Undivided and narrow freeways", and "movable bridges" list

This is a total of 31 (!) special cases.  My hope is that we can come to a
consensus on which tag to apply on a category basis.


On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 2:38 AM Anthony Costanzo <acjames28 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> One thing I recommend changing: in the draft wiki entry, there is a
> provision where "signed Interstate highways" are to be tagged as motorway
> regardless of their physical characteristics. This provision should be
> removed.
>
> Almost all of the signed interstate highway system meets the physical
> characteristics outlined, however where there are rare exceptions the map
> should show them as such. As the entry is written, there would, for
> example, be an expectation to tag as motorway:
> - I-78 in Jersey City, NJ, which is a one-way pair of surface streets for
> several blocks
> - I-70 in Breezewood, PA, which (in)famously passes through a couple
> signalized intersections as it leaves the Pennsylvania Turnpike
> - I-180 in Cheyenne, WY, which is entirely an at-grade urban boulevard
>
> All three of the above examples are currently tagged as trunk, and I would
> argue should remain so. In spite of being part of the interstate system,
> and signed as such, they are very much not motorways and not even
> almost-motorways.
>
> Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 17:54:32 -0400
>> From: "Brian M. Sperlongano" <zelonewolf at gmail.com>
>> To: talk-us <talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
>> Subject: [Talk-us] Update on potential highway classification reform
>> Message-ID:
>>         <
>> CAMrfQx0zJLXX+kSV+jkTeDqVGx5rx2QM0kTQ06A6oSWaxgOhrQ at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> I'd like to provide the community an update on the work that's been
>> happening to improve the current state of US highway classifications.
>> Following the recent talk-us threads, there were extensive debates in
>> Slack, especially in the #local-us-northeast channel, about how to better
>> apply the highway classification values with international norms,
>> especially the trunk classification, which seems to be the most
>> challenging.
>>
>> There was a strong consensus initially amongst New England mappers that
>> the
>> highway classifications should be used in a way that's consistent with the
>> connectivity importance of various roads.  There was also a general
>> agreement that documenting state-specific highway classification criteria
>> was important for preventing edit wars as well as documenting edge or
>> unusual cases and the rationale behind them.
>>
>> The outcome of those discussions was the following wiki page[1], which
>> offers general guidelines that can be applied in state-specific ways to
>> come up with criteria that mappers can follow.  As part of these
>> discussions, local mappers have been drafting state-specific pages that
>> would implement these general guidelines.  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 demo is set up to show the proposed "new" highway
>> classification alignment in *four* New England states only: VT, NH, MA,
>> and
>> RI.  The rest of the country is shown with no change to highway
>> classification.  In addition, this demo map is rigged to show
>> motorway/trunk at their normal zoom levels, but suppress highway=secondary
>> until zoomed in close, in order to specifically examine the motorway/trunk
>> network in better detail.
>>
>> Links:
>>
>> [1]
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States/Highway_classification
>> [2] http://74.97.52.189:6789/openstreetmap-carto/#7/43.250/-70.756
>>
>> I offer this update as an invitation to further collaboration on how we
>> might better map highway classifications in the US.
>>
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