[Talk-us] [Talk-us-newyork] Highway classification guidelines for New York State

[Kevin Kenny]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 4:25 PM Minh Nguyen <minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us>
wrote:

> Like many of the new state-level classification proposals, Kevin's
> proposal for New York would use expressway=yes rather than overloading
> highway=trunk. I think the debate here is about what to fill the
> highway=trunk slot with if we clear it of that historical anomaly.
>

It so happens that many of New York's trunk roads are also dual
carriageways (possibly with limited crossings or elevated speed limits).
But that shouldn't be too much of a surprise. A trunk road would be
expected to have a high traffic volume precisely because it's important to
the network. A sensible administration will likely give it particular
attention when budgeting money for road improvements. To say that "trunk ==
dual carriageway" would be to put the cart before the horse. To say that
"the presence of a dual carriageway on an interurban route is an indicator
that the road may be important enough to be considered a trunk," should be
relatively noncontroversial.

Of course, some dual-carriageways don't exist to link centers of
population. Those are probably primary roads, possibly primary expressways.
(I don't actually understand what constitutes an 'expressway' - that
appears to be a question where, if there are two mappers, there are three
opinions.)  And some dual carriageways are best described as roads for
which some political constituency has aspirations that they may become
trunks.

-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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