[OSM-talk] When is a road a secondary road and when is it not?

[Peter Childs]

2009/6/2 Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) <ajrlists at googlemail.com>:
> Peter Miller wrote:
>>Sent: 02 June 2009 5:31 PM
>>To: Talk Openstreetmap
>>Subject: [OSM-talk] When is a road a secondary road and when is it not?
>>
>>
>>I have used primary, secondary and tertiary to indicate relative
>>traffic levels on roads in Ipswich rather than any strict
>>classification. For example Landseer Road in Ipswich which is heavily
>>with lorries, buses and commuters, so bad that the council have
>>proposed building  a new road to 'relieve' it. I have now been asked
>>to justify my tagging by another mapper who has refered to the Map
>>Features page which states that secondary is only for "Administrative
>>classification "secondary" in the UK, generally linking smaller towns
>>and villages".
>>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features#Highway
>>
>>Ipswich on OSM
>>http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.0538&lon=1.1763&zoom=13&layers=B000FTF
>>
>>My approach seems to be an approach taken elsewhere, for example in
>>Bedford, where every secondary road does not have a B number?
>>http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.1344&lon=-
>>0.4517&zoom=13&layers=B000FTF
>>
>>Should we update the Map Features page or should we follow it more
>>carefully?
>>
>>
>>
>>Any thoughts?
>>
>
> Using the "what does it say on the ground rule" I tend to stick with the
> classification as posted, because then it is easy for anyone else to verify.
> Residential is generally easy enough, that just leaves unclassified and
> tertiary. These are the only two I use my opinion on but have over time come
> to use tertiary as sparingly as possible because of issues where a road
> traverses from the urban conurbation to the rural setting and the volume of
> traffic doesn't really warrant tertiary once it leaves the urban sprawl.
>
> Cheers
>
> Andy
>

I think the OSM map of Ipswich actually looks better than Google; I
don't think some of the road numbers on B roads have been updated in a
very long time. I can't always tell the difference when a Trunk and a
Primary I know of Primary that could be retagged as Trunk as they are
great big dual carriage ways with slip roads etc eg A289 to Hoo.

I know of A roads that are not anymore (due to bypasses) but the
locals know what the number was and some signs still exsist. (hence
the A228X  (I tagged it and added the X to remove any confusion)

There seams to be a long list of roads tagged as Motorways without
numbers, Trunk and Primary without numbers if you look at the raw
data. Some times there is good logic some times the data is wrong, it
seams the only way to sort it out is a case by case basis.....

Unfortunately no general rules.

Peter