[Talk-us] Update on potential highway classification reform

[Adam Franco]

On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 8:30 PM Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:

> I'm kinda liking the idea of numeric highway=* values replacing
> nonnumeric values, and just adding motorway=yes, expressway=yes,
> cycleway=yes, footway=yes etc to cover the specialized cases.  That
> might be a worthwhile thing to pursue globally.
>

I agree that numeric highway=* values (or something along the lines of
highway=motorway/major_1/major_2/major_3/minor_1/minor_2/minor3)  would be
vastly easier to translate and cause less confusion globally than the
British highway authority's quirky naming conventions. That said, I'm
afraid that gaining a global consensus that such an effort is worth it and
retagging the 185 million existing highways with new numeric values would
be a daunting project. I'd support such a project, but it isn't the hill
I'm looking to scale or defend today.

Rather than taking on that big project now, I see a much more approachable
short-term tactic: translate the existing british-text-values to a sensible
numerical hierarchy in our heads and in US-centric documentation so that US
mappers can apply the appropriate values to our own quirky road network in
a way that doesn't break the expectations of globally-aware routers and
renderers.
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