expressway= has already diverged from MUTCD by including undivided roads. It’s not “my region” is an exception, but likely UK, and much of Asia. I would assume those US “motorway” meanings are not as significant, and clearly they are not relevant to =motorway , but these expressways are closely related to expressway= , and indeed a subset in UK’s case. I would avoid a plain expressway=yes for a comparable reason as =soccer is used instead of =football , again difference being we haven’t found other terms for roads yet.
I never said anything about the MUTCD. That standard only pertains to signs and markings. All it says is that the Expressway Ends sign is optional at the end of an expressway, however defined. Other standards by FHWA and AASHTO influence the overall geometric design and construction of freeways and expressways or determine whether a highway counts as “Freeways and Expressways” for funding purposes. But focusing on regional standards misses my point. This is a term that appears in traffic engineering textbooks.
As we’ve discussed previously, you’re confusing official classifications or public-facing designations with industry jargon. My point is that this key follows the jargon. The UK Department for Transport adopted the term expressway about a decade ago. Note the many weasel words in the vision statement – just like we have in our definition. By then, this term was already in use in the traffic engineering field there.
What actually happened was that we replaced sport=football with sport=soccer (which by the way is also a term of British origin). Imagine instead that no unifying term “football” exists in English: we consistently use sport=soccer for association football in multiple countries, and data consumers are doing significant things with it, whereas sport=gridiron is being used consistently for the other kind. Imagine that mappers in some regions are frustrated because they don’t have a word for gridiron football (American, Australian, etc.). So they convince us to introduce gridiron=round for association football and gridiron=oblong for the other kind, as though the shape of the ball is the only thing that matters (sorry, fans of Gaelic football). That’s akin to what’s being proposed here.
I know you want to avoid the stench of a prominent key contradicting the lay understanding of an expressway in Asia. This proposal would merely shift the problem around. Let’s not forget that highway=* is the biggest misnomer of them all, yet OSM persists.
In practical terms, if there’s ever a push to extend iD’s Expressway field beyond North America or introduce expressway=yes to an Asian-centric map style’s legend, I would strongly support finding a different label for it.
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Is there a difference in meaning between the official or public-facing title, and the academic or industry term there?
- “An expressway is a high speed dual carriageway that has at least two lanes in each direction, grade separated junctions and uses technology to support operational regimes” Standards For Highways https://www.standardsforhighways.co.uk/tses/attachments/by-attachment-id/90af99b3-0a17-4c49-849d-16f19f440a25#page=19
- Last year, “The term ‘expressway’ has been replaced by ‘enhanced all-purpose dual carriageway’.”, but it’s the same in how Level 1 requires grade-separation Standards For Highways
In books, it’s not always written clearly
- AASHTO Green Book 7.3.1. Interesting wording about “freeways and expressways”: “Arterials in urban areas carry large or moderate traffic volumes within and through urban core, urban, and suburban contexts. Their design varies from freeways and expressways with fully con-trolled access to two-lane streets,” (doesn’t actually define “expressway”)
- The wiki mentions HCM, but HCM again doesn’t seem to define an “expressway” (at least in 7th ed)
- I haven’t looked at which are the best textbooks yet
If the “jargon” is used mainly because it’s a word that exist, is it a must to limit to one specific definition of it? If there’s a problem with migration, expressway=yes can be assumed to be expressway=limited ?
I’m not disagreeing with the limited-access criteria absolutely, but that I suggest foremost to distinguish between full grade-separation, and widely-spaced intersections. This proposal appeared after the highway:motorway=primary + motorway=yes one, where I suggested motorway:legal= vs motorway:physical= to distinguish between the 2 meanings. Fundamentally, even access control can have various interpretations, as discussed in the other post. That’s why I said my expressway=motorway can be considered as a =no , if you define them strictly.
I said =soccer has a “comparable reason”, not that the situation and solution are the same. Neither highway=motorway nor motorway= are proposed to be replaced by expressway=controlled or equivalent. On the contrary, I have exactly distinguished expressway= and them to be potentially different aspects, physical, functional, and legal.
For a particular view, the wiki comparison table includes =motorway implies expressway=yes File:Expressway or Not.png - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Historically as originally proposed, MUTCD was cited, although it doesn’t directly quote the “divided highway” requirement Proposal:Expressway indication - OpenStreetMap Wiki
only if you think about the American English meaning, e.g. a citation from the English wikipedia
A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It includes not just major roads, but also other public roads and rights of way. In the United States, it is also used as an equivalent term to controlled-access highway, or a translation for motorway ,
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I thought about footpaths, corridors, elevators, steps, and ladders. None of which are called highways in any dialect of English I’m aware of. Anyway, I think the point is that it doesn’t matter and the tagging works fine regardless.
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highway= could be seen as a thematic category or “layer”, similar to how =prison doesn’t exactly feel amenity= (asked from start) Proposal:Prison - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Furthermore, related features highway=traffic_signals= , and railway=signal etc, aren’t roads or tracks themselves. In contrast to both, shop= , office= , and building= are specified features, all being shops, offices, and buildings (mostly).
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