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

[Peter Miller]

On 2 Jun 2009, at 22:09, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:

> 2009/6/2 Kev <osm at kevswindells.eu>:
>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>> Both Primary and Trunk get green signs - but only the latter are
>> maintained by The Highway's Agency (in England) or on behalf of - the
>> rest are local authority roads
>
> This is the main point here I think: administrative classification is
> about ownership and maintenance of the road. Of course there also is a
> link between administrative classification and importance of
> connection, but planning norms and regulations usually deal with the
> "importance of connection". In general this classification corresponds
> also to administration classification, but not in all cases. In the
> end for our scope the importance of the connection is way more
> interesting than who pays the maintenance.

Thanks for the comments, however most of them refer to roads outside  
urban areas whereas my concern is within urban areas where few roads  
are marked as B roads. Personally I want a structure for the town  
which tells a story about today's road use, rather than a dusty  
document in a council. I should inform routing engines to keep cars on  
major roads and cyclists off them.

In Ipswich the official road classifications from the council seem to  
be very strange or possibly it is just out of date by 50 years! For  
example a notorious and dangerous road (Landseer Road) is classified  
as a C road. A small residential road on which I lived for a while  
with no lorry through traffic and few through vehicles at all is  
classified as a B road. A road to the old docks which now sadly has  
little traffic is still a B road. I think the general message is that  
the official information is not always that useful for tagging  
purposes and one should use one's eyes as well. If something is  
classified as a B road and sounds like a B road (noisy and lots of  
traffic) then should be tagged as a B road, similarly for trunk,  
primary and the others. However, if it is classified as a C road but  
sounds like a B road (noisy and lots of traffic) then it should  
probably be tagged a B road and vice versa.


Regards,


Peter

>
>
> Martin
>
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