There is no consensus about the local highway classification guidance yet. Please take a look at the recent discussion about this in #local-maryland, I strongly disagree that there is any reason for there to be "trunk" roads in Mount Vernon.

Sorry, I didn't finish a sentence. I wish changeset comments could be edited. About the Cold Spring ramp - the northbound one to I 83 which has a sidewalk in it school zone signage in it that I had to walk across and even in to get to school. I don't know where data consumers would be finding out about that stuff, that's still a motorway link because it's a "to" ramp

I did not intend for these edits to be disruptive and sorry to have caused any confusion. I am not sure where I have misunderstood something or what the "correct" way to map these now; this is not something I came up with but just was doing on the basis of what I read on the wiki and what is done elsewhere on the map in Maryland (various parts of Prince George's County are mapped like this). There is wording on the wiki like "They take the highest classification they go to," which I thought specifically was saying that they belong to the road they connect to rather than come from. I didn't notice this last time I looked, but the two picture examples actually show two different methods of classifying them which seems like a contradiction worth clarifying somehow.
The one on top shows links classed based on the highest road they come from, the one on the bottom shows them classed based on the highest they go to osm.wiki/Highway_link

I was also under the impression that while motorways themselves have access implications, links do not necessarily. The wiki is not clear on this and just says that situations like this are "rare" (rare in Europe I'm guessing) so as far as that goes I would think data consumers would just have to be conservative until there is a clear guideline. These particular ramps do not share the same access restrictions as the motorway, as is evidenced by the cross walks going through them, both on "to" and "from" ramps. If it really is the case that links also imply the same access restrictions, then don't these (and most of Baltimore's) "to" ramps need to be downgraded as well? I'm not actually sure how data consumers would be able to tell for example, that the northbound "to" ramp from Cold Spring (I actually had a conversation with someone at Baltimore DOT a couple months ago about school zone signage in highway ramps - there's a small possibility there could be more of that in there near future. And a different conversation with someone from at Bowie city govt last year about the sidewalks they're planning on building along some stretches of motorway link once the apartments planned for Melford Blvd are built.)

Interesting, I had no idea Spotify and MSN did that

Thank you for the image - it is helpful to know when it's from since this road has changed a lot recently. It is hard to tell here

Good catch, thanks

I appreciate the correction -- I take the stretch of the subway and light rail often enough to to know there are no barriers - on foot that is. I hadn't noticed the half barriers at some of the subway crossings even though I captured Mapillary sequences at one of them. When you're walking across those subway ones at night it's one of those spots where it feels like there should be something more there. I caught this when I was going through your Map Roulette task

thanks

turn lane is only the short stretch next to the parking lot and should be lanes = 2 there (just corrected)

Just a heads up - there's a lot of these buildings in Baltimore that have been demolished years ago, it would have been fine to delete

Hello,

I noticed you added a `name:pa-Arab` tag here alongside `name:pnb`. `name:pnb` is the most common existing way to tag Punjabi names in Shahmukhi; the use of `name:pa-Arab` has potential to add confusion by splitting up localizations. (The ISO suffixes are also poorly defined for languages used in Pakistan; technically the separate `-Aran` suffix would be the intended one in their schema, but it is unlikely to be recognized by data consumers. `pnb` has more widespread support.

not survey, aerial image, sorry

source should be survey

should've added street level imagery + survey as sources too

For reference, generally speaking in Baltimore public transit = state operated; highways and roadways = city operated (we have no state operated infrastructure for cars, other than the facility where you would get a driver's license).

> Btw, "busway:operator" is most likely wrong - this tag would describe the operator and maintainer of the busway itself, which is most likely not the public transport organization.

It is operated and enforced by the state Maryland Transit Administration, not the city, this is correct. The public transport infrastructure in the city is operated by the state; if you were to drive into a bus lane, it would be the Maryland Transit Police Force's responsibility, for example. I will remove the others but it is important to clarify the operator.

I had not realized the other variations on busway were so uncommon when I tagged them.

Right, and North Avenue I think is a safe cut off point for various changes since it's the boundary between the original core and everything else.

I've realized recently Baltimore is somewhat unique in that none of our roads which are nominally part of a state highway are maintained by the state, and route numbers are mostly unsigned. Part of what prompted me to look at classification was one of the OSM Americana maintainers pointed out most of the roads here tagged with ref=<route no.> should really be tagged with unsigned_ref, as having "US 40 Truck" rendered in larger text than North Ave itself doesn't really track with what's on the ground. I think mdroads has already done the work of identifying where the signage begins and ends

Alright, sounds good.

The classifications in that link are what I think a lot of the existing ones on OSM are based on, but the 2021 Highway Classification on the wiki almost seems to be subtly calling it out specifically as what to shift away from... they even use the phrase "highways to nowhere" to suggest that a situation like the isolated chunk of US-40 shouldn't be classified as a motorway just because it was built like one: osm.wiki/United_States/2021_Highway_Classification_Guidance

Before reading that I would have been inclined to have Saint Paul change classifications part way through because it does suddenly start to look like a literal highway closer to downtown, but the new guideline seems to suggest that this doesn't matter because it doesn't change the role in the network - after all people tend to be traversing it as a single corridor, not a street and a highway.

I was thinking a simple reference point for the primary + secondary roads is the designated "city gateways" (https://transportation.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/City%20Gateway%2011x17.pdf) and the historical streetcar network. Baltimore was built as a streetcar town after all, and the transport network still mimics it in a lot of ways almost a century later, down to even bus stop distribution. Hence where Charles is primary, it makes sense for Saint Paul and Maryland to be too, since together they've carried the same bus/streetcar routes. It gets intangible but I think the result of those sources is something most locals would agree makes sense - like before I switched it, Pennsylvania Ave was secondary to Druid Hill and McCulloh but Pennsylvania would be anybody's first answer to what the main corridor that way is.

Yeah I agree - I got a bit confused at first trying to make sense of the highway classification guidelines but I think I've arrived at something that makes a bit more sense. Sorry to have left a mess here, I think Maryland, Cathedral, Charles, and Saint Paul should all be primary because they can't be decoupled from each other in the way they relate to the network, and Calvert and Guilford should be secondary throughout. Been mostly editing in West Baltimore but got surprised when I saw Howard was "minor unclassified" in Mt. V...

I have some ideas about how to propose this more formally drafted, I'll share that this week before doing anything more with it. feel free to revert anything or change it to something more sensible

I did tag the route_ref on the bus lanes to make it clear which bus route the dedicated lanes are for.