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

[Eric Patrick]

>
> Moreover, like so many things in the US, it's also become quite
> politicized in places.  In some p;laces, the physical characteristics of
> roads, their designated functional class, and their designated arterial
> class, vary in a patchwork with very little coherence, because they're
> based primarily on which local interest groups lobbied most effectively for
> highway funding.


A DOT is about as non political as you can get. They do get feedback from
the public, but I don't believe you can lobby a DOT to make a road a
certain classification of road. Road classification comes from the FHWA
definition, not a lobby group or a local government entity. Albany, Ga
can't go to the DOT and say "we'd like this road to be a
principal arterial road" and then it's done. The city can put in a request
for the state to evaluate it as such, and they make the ultimate
determination, but there's no lobbying of a DOT by interest groups.

Is this a feature request, or perhaps you're familiar with a router that
> places this much importance on the road classification?


OsmAnd codes it as such.

Strictly following the state DOT's functional classifications would
> require some due diligence about copyright status


I don't believe there'd be a problem with any state giving up the copyright
if it's for the reason to help it's citizens get from Point A to B in a
timely manner.

It's not like primary is *always* going to be conflated with expressway.
> That's only going to be the case for less important roads that are built as
> expressways.


Why not have a rule which states "if a road has expressway/motorway
properties, then map it as a motorway" or something to that effect. There
can be  limitations on length of road which could be set in place, for
example: "If a road is an expressway for 2 miles, then continue on with
regular functional classification" or "if road is expressway for 15 miles,
upgrade to motorway." This would help everyone who is looking and editing
the map be on the same page. There would also be no wiggle room to cause
errors, and it would also put a stop to a road going from flip flopping
between motorway and trunk/primary/secondary, etc.

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.


You want to see indecisiveness? Walk up to an ambulance crew and ask them
what they're going to eat for lunch.

If I were to upgrade all of Providence's FHWA principal arterials to trunk,
> this would now leave me with 12 trunk or motorways routes in and out of the
> city, compared to Ipswich's four.  This tells me that principal arterials
> are not significant enough to qualify as trunk roads based on
> international equivalence.


I wouldn't believe so. The bigger picture for Providence comes into play
with Rhode Island's next door neighbors. Since much of that area is
condensed, a trunk road as a primary arterial could cross state lines. It
may not make sense for RI, but it may make sense for MA or CT. Take US-1 as
an example; it connects Canada to Key West. I'm sure it's a Primary
Arterial throughout all of the states it goes through. If trunk roads were
to be PAs, then it would function properly, up until it gets to RI, then
all of a sudden it's a primary road just because someone decided it should
be a primary road? I'm not saying your opinion doesn't matter as I do value
your opinion (and everyone's), but having a patchwork of road types for the
same road doesn't make sense.

On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 12:55 PM Eric Patrick <txemt1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I’m caught up, I’ve just been extremely busy in the last 48 hours. I’ll
> post more of my thoughts & replies later today, or tomorrow (my off day).
> I’m not ignoring if anyone has thought that. I have a few good replies to
> Kevin and someone else.
>
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 11:04 Zeke Farwell <ezekielf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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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