[OSM-talk] [RFC] highway=unclassified currently is too ambiguous, so here's my proposal to fix it.

[Shaun McDonald]

On 5 Aug 2009, at 06:40, John Smith wrote:

>
> Currently highway=unclassified is too ambiguous, and while there was  
> a proposal to replace this with highway=minor this seems to have  
> gone no where yet the same problem still exists.
>
> I'm proposing not to replace highway=unclassified but to clarify  
> it's meaning to be one thing, that is it has higher volumes of  
> traffic than residential, but not enough to be considered tertiary.
>
> I'm also proposing to introduce a new highway classification for non- 
> urban* areas. That is highway=rural would be for roads generally  
> lesser than residential, generally unsealed but some of them are  
> sealed and they generally only have a single lane depending how  
> zealous the grader driver was feeling.
>
> Please comment and so forth on the talk page and hopefully this can  
> be sorted out once and for all.
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/highway:rural
>
>

You can determine whether an unclassified road is rural by whether  
there are other things around in the area. That's the whole point of  
Geo extensions in databases. you can also do some preprocessing if you  
need to.

Shaun