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

[Zeke Farwell]

On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 7:52 PM Eric Patrick <txemt1 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Functional classification isn't going for looks, though, it's going for
> function. The states have spent a lot of time and effort since FC was first
> introduced about a decade ago.
>

Functional classification isn't going for looks, but the OSM highway=*
classification is.  To control information density, one map may display
only trunk and motorway roads, another may display only primary and higher,
and yet another may display only tertiary and higher.  Ideally all three
should be a sensible and coherent highway network map even though they are
omitting lower classes or roads.  This is a slightly different goal than
functional classification.  To determine which roads ought to be trunk in
Vermont, we looked at the FHWA functional classifications, the National
Highway System, and the state DOT snow plowing priority map.  It would have
been nice if our state DOT had a single classification system that we could
simply map onto OSM highway=* values to produce a good highway map.  Since
they do not, we looked at the commonalities between these datasets and
considered connectivity between cities and towns of regional importance.
This gave us a pretty clear picture of which roads are the most important
in the state.


There should be some conversation about the lower roads, as they're just as
> important as the major roads, especially the secondary.
>

In Vermont we're taking it one step at a time as we volunteers have limited
time and energy.  Now that we have trunk roads determined I'm sure we'll
move on to the lower classes, but there hasn't been much discussion on this
yet.  I imagine Kevin is similarly trying to break the problem up into
pieces so as not to get overwhelmed with the complexity.
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