1. I agree with Paul that the US definitely does have trunk roads. High-speed dual carriageways with some grade crossings, or 'super twos,' both qualify. (See (3) for the counterargument about 'importance to the highway network.')
2. The network and route number do not reliably identify the highway class. New York has unnumbered roads, state highways, and US highways, that are definitely freeways, There is at least one section of Interstate that is not a freeway, but rather a 'super two'. US Highways can be anything from unclassified or tertiary (there are some US highways that the world has bypassed, but retain the designation for historical reasons) to freeway. New York's numbered state highways all appear to be at least secondary, but some are primaries, trunks or motorways. 3. While the 'highway=*' designation is supposed to denote 'importance to the highway system', the road characteristics (surface, lanes, speed limit, ...) are useful surrogates. Highway administrators who commission multi-lane divided highways that don't provide a major connection in the network, or elevate crossings on low-traffic roads, tend to get tarred and feathered by the taxpayers, so the road characteristics tend to provide a lower bound on the highway class. It's not a hard upper bound; in some rural areas, a tertiary or even secondary road may well be narrow and lack a hard surface, simply because that's what the traffic demands and the community will support. It's also not an infallible guide, particularly in urban areas; a city street may be six or eight lanes wide in a congested area without necessarily having a key role in the network. 4. The official designation of the road's importance is tremendously influenced by politics. Nevertheless, that designation determines highway funding, which in turn determines the quality of the road, which in turn ought to determine routing precedence, so in the end, even if the official designation doesn't make sense, a designated 'trunk' road will likely be built to support more traffic and a higher speed than a 'tertiary' one. 5. This isn't the first edit war on the subject. Some more details follow. On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 12:08 PM Matthew Woehlke <mwoehlke.fl...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 28/09/2020 11.42, Jack Burke wrote: > > I'm willing to bet that most OSM editors who drive on either of those two > > will think "this is a great freeway, just with occasional traffic signals." > > That's an oxymoron. Freeways are, by definition, limited access (no > crossing intersections, period) and do not have (permanent¹) signs or > signals to halt traffic. IMNSHO, if it has traffic lights, stop signs, > or the possibility of vehicles suddenly driving *across* the way, it > isn't a freeway. > > That's not to say there aren't non-interstate highways that meet these > definitions. > > But... is it a highway=trunk? *I* don't see where the wiki excludes the > possibility. (It does, however, seem to me that only *actual* interstate > freeways should be highway=motorway in the US.) I beg to differ. NY-17 is indeed a motorway for most of its length (east and south of Harriman, it ought to be primary) It's more-or-less permanently unfinished between Deposit and Hancock, because the terrain offers extremely difficult challenges to freeway-building. Portions are, in fact, posted intermittently as 'Future I-86', but my understanding is that it can't get that designation until and unless the missing bit in the middle is finished. Several of New York's state parkways, such as Southern State Parkway https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1676429, are multi-lane, dual carriageway, access fully controlled, all crossings elevated, for their entire length. Southern State Parkway would differ from 'Interstate' only in that: (a) the speed limit is 55 mile/hr (but all urban freeways in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, including I-495, have the reduced speed limit), (b) they are hgv=no, (c) they don't have Federal interstate highway funding. It's not clear to me that any of these attributes would make them 'not a freeway'. Taconic Parkway is controversial. To me, it's clearly a trunk road from the southern terminus through I-287 (mile 2.85), with all but one intersection at grade. Between I-287 and Peekskill Hollow Road (mile 41.28) it drives like a freeway. All the crossings are elevated. North of that, the crossings with major roads are mostly elevated, but local streets typically have intersections at grade. North of Rigor Hill Road (mile 152.73) there are no at-grade crossings to the northern terminus (I-90, mile 104.12). I've mostly refrained from editing this one. My preference would be to call it a motorway between I-287 and Peekskill Hollow Road, and again between NY-203 and I-90, and a trunk road in between. At one point, the locals (or the TIGER import?) had mapped it as 'motorway' throughout, downgrading it to 'trunk' only for a few hundred yards surrounding each at-grade intersection; I consider the latter practice pernicious, but try to avoid jumping into edit wars. There's controversy around New York's lesser trunk roads. US-20 was called a trunk at one time It was subsequently downgraded to 'primary' but it has sections of dual-carriageway with infrequent at-grade intersections (example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/516582307) that probably warrant the 'trunk' designation, particularly in light of the road's importance as a medium-distance through road. It's just far enough from I-90 that significant amounts of traffic use it as a through street. I might well drive it from Duanesburg to Richfield Springs in preference to taking I-90 to Fort Plain, Little Falls or Herkimer, or I-88 to Colliersville. In fact, there's a destination sign on I-88 westbound that recommends 'Cooperstown: exits 24 and 17.' I might even keep the trunk' designation for the short reduced-speed single-carriageway bits in the villages, rather than cluttering the map with frequent upgrades/downgrades. NY-5, for example in the area between NY-890 and Amsterdam (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/20116293 in part), to me is another candidate for 'trunk.' It's high-speed, dual-carriageway, albeit with numerous grade crossings (very few on the side toward the river, though). I've seen it seriously argued, though, that it doesn't merit even 'primary' because of a perceived 'lack of importance to the road network', since I-90 is so close and runs parallel to it. In my opinion, that particular argument overlooks the natural barrier that the river presents. NY-5 is indeed the major road serving the communities north of the river. Moreover, the Thruway is designed with infrequent interchanges, and has one or another primary road running parallel to it for pretty much its entire length, serving the communities that it bypasses. (NY 7 was retained parallel to I-88, US-11 parallel to I-81, and so on, for a similar reason). > Related: if it's I-## or I-###, shouldn't it be a highway=motorway, > period? (Unless those, for some reason, are ever *not* freeways?) The only exception of which I'm directly aware is that I-93 is a 'super two' through Franconia Notch (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/206726514 and nearby ways) in New Hampshire. That one little section traverses terrain that is both difficult and environmentally sensitive. It's probably not feasible to widen the road, but the authorities have seen fit to keep the 'I-93' designation continuous rather than interrupting it for one pass through the White Mountains. It wouldn't astonish me to learn of other exceptions. -- 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
