[Talk-us] Update on potential highway classification reform

[Jmapb]

Checking in from the Catskills in NY, I don't see anything around here
that would merit trunk under these new rules. Again, of course, it
depends on the interpretation for "population centers of regional
importance", whether that's a minimum population or some other measure.
But basically the population centers are the corners of the
Albany-Kingston-Binghamton interstate triangle, all motorway-connected.

We currently have a couple of trunk stubs heading west from I-87, on
State Routes 23 and 28. I believe these were tagged based on the
"reasonably high-speed limited-access dual carriageway that's not quite
a motorway" definition of trunk. I don't see a problem with the current
tagging but if a ruleset were adopted that downgraded them to primary I
wouldn't have a problem with that.

Peering westward, the problematic center of regional importance that
stands out to me is Ithaca. It's a hub of primary and secondary state
highways radiating in all directions, and none is the single major route
into town. Depending on which city you're driving from you'll approach
on a different one. It would feel odd to promote most or all of these to
trunk.

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Back in my NYC stomping grounds, I'm looking at the Brooklyn and
Manhattan Bridges. These are both currently trunk, which I like. The
proposed urban trunk rules, by my reading, would say the Manhattan
doesn't qualify for trunk status because only one end connects to a
motorway (versus both ends for the Brooklyn.) But there is not a serious
difference in the prominence of these two roadways. If anything, one
might say Manhattan is the more prominent because it carries more lanes,
but I strongly believe they should have the same classification. (If
they were *both* forced to downgrade to primary, I wouldn't weep. Much.)

The proposed definition of primary also gives me pause vis-a-vis NYC, in
particular the line"in a large enough city, surface streets with an exit
from a motorway would likely qualify as primary." I see plenty of
examples of motorway exits onto secondary and tertiary streets. The
streets in question are not primary because they are *not* the most
prominent streets in the urban grid. (And there's probably some sense in
dumping motorway traffic into places that don't clog up the major arteries!)

Just to be clear, I don't think all of NYC's surface streets are
perfectly classified, but this kind of rule is going to hurt more than
it helps. We'd end up with lots of one-block-long primary highways,
which would trigger a ripple effect of upgrades to match comparative
prominence and to fix continuity errors.

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It could well be that NY State deserves one page of classification
rules, and NYC another. But if we end up with a list of 50 different
state rulesets, all with city-specific addenda, I feel for the sanity of
the mappers (not to mention the wiki maintainers.)

Jason