Official classification of highways

[Richard (Richard Fairhurst)]

@Minh_Nguyen

But if you want, you could stick this information in our common junk drawer, affectionately known as designation=*, to make it less likely to be consumed by software.

I think @SomeoneElse and I might disagree with you there…

[Baloo_Uriza]

Looks like two unrelated issues along highway and ref.

For highway, please see the two other relevant threads where your suggestion has already been pretty thoroughly explained away as unfeasible.

For ref, consider it moot as ref=* on ways is obsolete, replaced by route relations.

[SomeoneElse (Andy Townsend)]

@Richard

@Minh_Nguyen

… junk drawer, affectionately known as designation=*, to make it less likely to be consumed by software.

I think @SomeoneElse and I might disagree with you there…

Haha! yes. Hava a look at the transportation layer in this schema. That’s what I use for vector (and also raster) tiles. Almost none of the values in there are “just from one tag in OSM”, which is why all these threads we’ve had recently saying “we must change the way we tag things” are (at best) coming from a misunderstanding of what OSM data is and how you can use it. designation is used a lot, and not just for “public footpaths” et al.

I would encourage anyone proposing tag changes to instead ask “how could I get the information I need out of OSM as it stands” - in many cases it will already be there.

[Minh_Nguyen (Minh Nguyễn)]

@SomeoneElse

designation is used a lot, and not just for “public footpaths” et al.

Amazing, I’m glad that the key has more traction than the wiki page lets on. If the U.S. were more organized, designation=* would probably be more popular here too, but we so often have multiple concurrent schemes to contend with that we need more specialized keys to keep the designations from getting mixed up. (We solved this problem for route designations using route relations but haven’t begun to solve this problem for heritage designations yet.)

[HikeAndMap]

You can just add ownership to a note right?
I see nothing wrong really with the current highway tagging. It’s working fine for me

Same with official road classification. Just add it to a note..

There’s nothing wrong with using notes, totally legit.

[pavvv]

@hoserab

To me a road between two towns of 5,000 people apiece could easily be of “primary" importance.

That would require changing of several D roads from secondary to primary which I believe aren’t of best quality. In Poland I proposed a population threshold of 30k people and others have disagreed with me saying it’s too little. I know that Poland is bigger than Belgium, but 5k is incredibly low. You’d have to change most roads in the country from secondary to primary if you really believe that.

@hoserab

And I’d hardly call crossing a border a “random change”.

The value of highway=* should only change on a junction unless it’s a parameter/legal-based value like motorway. Borders are not enough and a road should always connect to another road of higher or equal hierarchy value.

@hoserab

If the road is more important to the Belgians than the French who are you or I to tell them otherwise?

Seriously? The current tagging suggests that most people get to the French border and turn back. It’s really not difficult to determine a road’s importance. This isn’t about countries calling roads more or less important. It’s about looking at what’s on the ground and seeing the actual, real importance of the road. This can be measured with AADT for example.

@Jofban

They refer to the design standard that the road was built to. This usually correlates with importance, but can diverge over time if demand patterns change.
This could be tagged with highway:category, though something like design_standard:<name of design manual used for planning>=<design standard> might be more universally applicable. E.g. Germany has three different manuals depending on the official classification (RASt, RAL, RAA) and even just for motorways and motorroads (RAA), there are three different classes (Entwurfsklasse 1, 2, 3) before they are classified by road width (e.g. RQ 43,5 ). Food for thought.

That’s interesting though highway:category should be used for the administrative hierarchy or its equivalent. I suppose design_standard sounds fine. I think it should have a country prefix/suffix though.

[Jofban]

What exactly is

@pavvv

the administrative hierarchy or its equivalent.

and how can I tell which value I need to enter?

If it’s like the german Bundesstraße (an official designation), then it’s already part of the ref (e.g. ref=B 44). Would you consider either tagging redundant in that case?

[pavvv]

I addressed that here

@pavvv

Now, ref=* usually already shows what the road is classified as but sometimes roads can have no ref and in that case, noref=* doesn’t give any information. Sometimes, at junctions, roads can have small sections of no ref but still be managed by a certain entity so this would also be a sort of micromapping tag.

To be honest, I feel like it would overall be easier for data consumers to go along such a tag, would it not?
Either way, I think the best way to do it is to allow having tags like network=DE:national on ways. This means that sections with noref=yes could have this information added back but overall I guess ref=* is usually already enough.

[Jofban]

@pavvv

Either way, I think the best way to do it is to allow having tags like network=DE:national on ways. This means that sections with noref=yes could have this information added back but overall I guess ref=* is usually already enough.

I think having it on route relations as is done now is the better approach. The entity responsible for managing the road is distinct from that anyhow.

Of course, if “residential street” somehow became an official designation, this would essentially require a relation for all highway=residential ways. Then again, this might finally resolve the street relation question…

[pavvv]

@Jofban

I think having it on route relations as is done now is the better approach.

Overall yes, but for those tiny bits with noref=*, the tag should be present there.

@Jofban

Of course, if “residential street” somehow became an official designation

In Poland such roads are could usually be tagged with network=pl:municipal (or network=pl:local, it doesn’t seem to be standardised) and I believe residential roads in other counties could have adequate tags also.

[hoserab]

@pavvv

@hoserab

To me a road between two towns of 5,000 people apiece could easily be of “primary" importance.

That would require changing of several D roads from secondary to primary which I believe aren’t of best quality. In Poland I proposed a population threshold of 30k people and others have disagreed with me saying it’s too little. I know that Poland is bigger than Belgium, but 5k is incredibly low. You’d have to change most roads in the country from secondary to primary if you really believe that.

I wrote “… could be of ‘primary’ importance,” not that every single road between every single 5,000-person town on the planet is so.

For the sake of argument if we did follow your arbitrary 30,000-person cut-off to define where roads are “primary", here’s what my little corner of the world looks like:

For reference that snapshot is of roughly 600,000 square kilometres; almost twice the size of Poland. The distance from Fort McMurray at the north end and Lethbridge at the south is about the same as the distance from Gdansk to Budapest: almost a thousand kilometres. This was taken at zoom level 6, so only roads tagged trunkand motorway show.

Two cities over a million people, three over 100,000, and 13 over 30,000. Are you really going to tell me that only roads connecting those 18 dots to each other merit highway=primary? Really?

@pavvv

@hoserab

And I’d hardly call crossing a border a “random change”.

The value of highway=* should only change on a junction unless it’s a parameter/legal-based value like motorway. Borders are not enough and a road should always connect to another road of higher or equal hierarchy value.

A border is not enough of a “parameter/legal-based value” to change the classification of a road?

@pavvv

@hoserab

If the road is more important to the Belgians than the French who are you or I to tell them otherwise?

Seriously? The current tagging suggests that most people get to the French border and turn back. It’s really not difficult to determine a road’s importance. This isn’t about countries calling roads more or less important. It’s about looking at what’s on the ground and seeing the actual, real importance of the road. This can be measured with AADT for example.

Seriously. “Looking at what’s on the ground and seeing the actual, real importance of the road” is obviously a lot more difficult to than you think it is, given you’re the one with the problem with how it has shaken out.

If you do use AADT as a determinant, what are the cut-offs you’re going to establish for each of these highway classifications? How many cars-per-day merits primary? What happens if the crossing at the Belgium-France border has far more AADT on the Belgian side; what if people really do just use that road to “get to the French border and turn back”? How do you account for population density, as in my example screenshot?

Whatever criteria you devise will be subjective, no matter how objective you think your system will be, and it will be the subject of arguments just like we’re having now.

[dieterdreist (Martin Koppenhöfer)]

@Jofban

If it’s like the german Bundesstraße (an official designation), then it’s already part of the ref (e.g. ref=B 44). Would you consider either tagging redundant in that case?

it should be pointed out that this is the official administrative designation, but there are also engineering road classes in Germany, which arguably, while less visible on the ground, are at least as relevant in the context of OSM when trying to describe the road network.

[rskedgell (Robert Skedgell)]

@pavvv

Borders are not enough and a road should always connect to another road of higher or equal hierarchy value.

Problem solved. The road on the other side of the border does connect to another road of higher or equal hierarchy value.

[Jofban]

@dieterdreist

there are also engineering road classes in Germany

@Jofban

E.g. Germany has three different manuals depending on the official classification (RASt, RAL, RAA) and even just for motorways and motorroads (RAA), there are three different classes (Entwurfsklasse 1, 2, 3) before they are classified by road width (e.g. RQ 43,5 ).

You mean this? I agree, it’s important to make the distinction. Hence the design_standard tag idea.

[pavvv]

@hoserab

I wrote “… could be of ‘primary’ importance,” not that every single road between every single 5,000-person town on the planet is so.

Yeah? Obviously. That doesn’t justify primary in that place though.

@hoserab

For the sake of argument if we did follow your arbitrary 30,000-person cut-off to define where roads are “primary", here’s what my little corner of the world looks like:

While Poland can be compared to neighbouring countries or other countries in Europe, it cannot be compared to Canada in the slightest so I will not respond to the rest of that argument.

@hoserab

A border is not enough of a “parameter/legal-based value” to change the classification of a road?

A parameter/legal-based value of highway=* is motorway, trunk in some countries, living_street, service and others.

@hoserab

Seriously. “Looking at what’s on the ground and seeing the actual, real importance of the road” is obviously a lot more difficult to than you think it is, given you’re the one with the problem with how it has shaken out.

No, it’s not that deep. Somehow there are countries that tag highway=* values based on the road importance rather than blindly copying official classification.

@hoserab

If you do use AADT as a determinant, what are the cut-offs you’re going to establish for each of these highway classifications?

I don’t recommend using it as the main determinant because it accounts for local traffic too. My point was that it’s not like all the traffic disappears at the French border, because that’s what the current tagging implies.

@hoserab

what if people really do just use that road to “get to the French border and turn back”?

Then it’s fine but that’s just not the case.

@hoserab

How do you account for population density, as in my example screenshot?

As I said in another thread, each country should look at what the road’s functions are and base their tagging off that. Initially it should be what the current tagging is about with minor changes like the ones on border crossings. I don’t recommend a revolution as in mass changing the categories of roads but instead just recommend a change of schemes because the current one is not does not fulfill its role as it should.

@hoserab

Whatever criteria you devise will be subjective, no matter how objective you think your system will be, and it will be the subject of arguments just like we’re having now.

We’ve being saying that the whole time. Highway values have always been subjective and importance would be also. You did not discover America.

Overall, you really missed the point here and started making unreasonable comparisons.

I swear, people here have an algorithm that goes like this: 1) post has more than 10 lines of text 2) post is not from pavvv 3) I leave a thumbs-up on the post

@rskedgell

Problem solved. The road on the other side of the border does connect to another road of higher or equal hierarchy value.

Please read the post again. You missed the word ‘always’.

[Jofban]

@pavvv

Borders are not enough and a road should always connect to another road of higher or equal hierarchy value.

Strictly speaking, that allows only equal hierarchy value. If the other road is of higher hierarchy value, then that road by necessity connects to a road of lower hierarchy value.

Of course, this only applies if we are talking about traffic volume (which usually only changes at junctions). The road design and legal classifications can change whereever.