I can see the disadvantages of this perspective, but thought I woud put it out anyway.
Out in rural areas, some OSi maps have a thick yellow line and a thin yellow line for tertiary roads. The differentiation is made according to road width (can't remember the threshold width). I find this really useful when going out cycling -- roughly speaking the thick yellow lines are roads wide enough for two cars to pass at speed, i.e. to R-Road standards. The thin yellow lines are narrower and hence the average speed of cars is much lower -- much more preferable for cycling. This difference is also useful when driving a car in rural areas: the thin yellow lines are to be avoided in a car even if it results in a shorter distance to a destination, as it is really unsafe to exceed 50 km/h on those roads, whereas 80km/h is feasible on many of the thick yellow lines. Of course this could easily be more appropriately acheived in OSM with a width tag. I'm not sure what logic is used in the Local Primary/Secondary/Tertiary classifications. So the tentative classification I am suggesting is: 1. Wide enough for two cars to pass at speed (rural) / an important link road (urban) = tertiary 2. Not wide enough for 2 cars to pass at speed (rural) / not important for routing (urban) = unclassified As I said, I can see the disadvantages of this idea (road classification should not be made solely on width when there is a width tag for this purpose), but on the plus side, this proposed classification is easy to remember and is useful for various types of road users. As a final thought, I know I am very guilty of sloppy tertiary/unclassfied categorisations in East County Limerick. Thomas. _______________________________________________ Talk-ie mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ie
