Hello,
Please note the 'name' tag is not applicable for legal description of land - see osm.wiki/Names, "Names are not for descriptions". If this status implies some sort of legal access to the public or some sort of protection, this should be noted using other tags.

Thanks,
Bradley

I'm not copying off of FC maps, which can be verified by checking the NDOT FC maps for the area. (Baring, my archetypal example of a secondary artery, is classified primary artery in the NDOT maps for example). My argument in a simplified example is that Pyramid is categorically more important than Sparks, which is categorically more important than say, Los Altos, which is categorically more important than Spanish Springs Rd. This is corroborated by NDOT traffic counts, road design, and my own experience living and driving in the area for nearly two decades.

I understand that it "makes sense" that Veterans looks like an obvious thru-route from space, but the fact is that on the ground it's primarily used as an alternate route to connect NE Sparks & the TRIC with SE Reno; it isn't really used as an inter-regional highway so much as a major urban artery.

With regard to "collectors/minor arterials to tertiary/secondary" - being more rigid about setting collectors to tertiary and minor arterials to secondary to sharpen the "fuzziness" that currently exists in the R/S area necessitates the upgrading of a good chunk of current secondary roads to primary, which is what I have done. The roads I bumped up to primary are not minor arteries, and they carry traffic volumes double to triple nearby secondary arteries. If, for example, Baring between Sparks and Vista is classified secondary (which, as a road that functions as an artery rather than a collector, I think is pretty unambiguously correct), then Vista from Baring to the freeway *cannot* also be secondary. It's substantially busier, moves more traffic faster by design, and is thus more important. We don't have a node/mesh method of figuring out urban classification like we do with cross-country routes, so I think the next best thing would be to look at traffic data and road design.

Another good example of this problem is with Peckham and Moana - Peckham should be tagged secondary since it functions as a minor artery, but that would imply Moana at least between Virginia and 580 should be primary. Same deal with Plumb and Vassar between Kietzke and Terminal.

The classifications out here haven't sat well with me for a long time, I just haven't felt like spending time thinking about it and adjusting it until now, because I generally think time is better spent on OSM actually adding and improving data rather than fiddling endlessly with road classifications. Again, I am happy to participate in discussion about this and if consensus settles on a certain classification scheme that sees these downgraded that's fine with me. I have a handful of thoughts about classifying urban vs. cross-country roadways that I would be happy to share. But I'm not going to revert this just because you disagree with it, and I don't think the changes I've made here - which are, to be clear, tagging some major urban arteries (20k+ AADT) as 'primary' and a floating urban expressway as 'trunk' - are so out of line with US tagging practices that it warrants its own specific discussion when, again, I am intimately familiar with the area, have been contributing here for a decade, and have a relatively simple and data-driven argument (as much as there can be here) as to why I made the changes.

Hi,
The discussions I've seen about this over the last year or two have largely centered around restructuring inter-regional highway classification and not so much about urban roadways. I'm not particularly set on this, but Reno/Sparks roadway network is a mess compared to most other cities that have a more coherent grid and I want to try a different approach to see if it makes more sense.

Right now in R/S, 'tertiary' corresponds fuzzily to anything from a minor "emergent" collector to a minor arterial, 'secondary' from minor arterial to busy major arterial, 'primary' to extra-busy artery usually with high access control (until Virginia through downtown core got upgraded). Here are some examples of the problems this introduces (side note that my definition of "busy" is taken both from my decade+ experience of having lived in Reno/Sparks - still a stones through away and drive through a couple times a month - along with evaluating NDOT TRINA traffic counts):

- Baring and Vista were both secondary since they're both arterial roads, though Vista carries significantly more traffic at a higher speed than Baring
- E Lincoln, now a very busy commercial road, was classed the same as quieter "emergent" collectors like Greenbrae or O'Callaghan
- Sun Valley and Highland Ranch both function as arterial roads and were both classed 'secondary' but SV is substantially busier and more built out
- Veterans maintains its 'trunk' class south of S Meadows, but based on both my experience driving it and analysis of traffic counts, there isn't a clear "most important" way to connect to the freeway once you enter the SE Reno suburban grid. Traffic counts drop off sharply as you move south with most traffic turning off at Steamboat/Damonte to connect with the freeway. There is no signage on 580 indicating Veterans for navigational use (i.e., Veterans Blvd exit to Sparks or similar). It acts functionally to collect traffic from SE Reno and funnel it into Sparks or east, and having it 'trunk' south of S Meadows seems like maintaining classification continuity for the sake of maintaining classification continuity rather than trying to represent what's happening on the ground.

I can come up with more examples but this is already enough of an essay as it is. Moving to the following scheme results in much more straightforward classification choices and resolves most of these problems:
Local -> res/unc
Collector -> tertiary
Minor arterial -> secondary
Major arterial -> primary
Urban 'highway' -> trunk
The tradeoff is a messier map with classification dead ends, but R/S has a messy roadway network with lots of terminal geography resulting in short but extremely busy spur arteries. I don't know if this is the right choice entirely, but loosening strictness around classification continuity solves a lot of the mess of classifying the road hierarchy here.

On urban trunks, Pyramid is the most trafficked non-freeway road in the entire region, and is built out much more as a highway than a major urban artery like McCarran. Having it the same classification as, say, Sparks, would under-represent its importance. Once Pyramid reaches McCarran, traffic splits off between Pyramid and west McCarran with bias towards W McCarran - there isn't a clear choice between the two. I might be convinced by an argument to bump N McCarran up to trunk between 395 and Pyramid since this "route" is again the heaviest trafficked urban route in the region (ie, at least 15% of the population of R/S drives this road daily, and that's at 1 driver per car).

I think there definitely needs to be more discussion about urban classifications now that everyone is mostly on the same page about inter-urban highways, and I'm happy to participate, but I'm not going to spur off a discussion any time I feel a reason to bump a road up past 'secondary' in a region that I am very familiar with and have been a primary contributor in for a decade now. There's lots of classification choices you've made in NV that I don't agree with (and that others have reached out to me with disagreements about as well) - NV 341 as primary, tolled park roads in Lake Mead NRA as primary, NV 157 dead-ending at a small summer community of less than 400 as primary, still very on the fence about 95 Alt through Yerington as trunk, Virginia through downtown Reno as primary - but I have left these alone despite my open disagreements about them since we haven't really settled on an urban road class structure here yet, and I ask for myself the same respect here.

Bradley

Hey, just a heads up that this changeset removed a couple ways that in turn broke a number of relations (county boundaries, USFS boundaries, forest landcover). I'll have this fixed shortly, but in the future please do not delete ways unless you are certain what you are doing, especially when they belong to large relations.

Thanks,
Bradley

This sounds like a problem with the routing engine rather than the data. "Massaging" data to correct undesired behavior in third-party apps is generally considered bad practice, similar to "tagging for the renderer". If the tags are correct (in this case, foot/bicycle/horse=designated rather than *=yes, because these trails aren't just simply open for use via these travel modes but are designated specifically for use via these modes), then the problem is with app, not the data.

Hello,
I've noticed this is the second time you've changed tags for foot/bicycle=designated to foot/bicycle=yes on this stretch of the TRT. Why are you making this change? These trails are designated for foot, bicycle, and equestrian use and are signposted as such.

Bradley

Found a mobile-friendly way to look at the way history - there isn't a road across the meadow there, nor is there any evidence of one having been there in the past. Multiple visits to the area myself confirm this. This geometry is imported from old TIGER data, which is notoriously inaccurate with minor roads.

Hi ConnorWong,
I can confirm this way deletion specifically later tonight when I can get in front of JOSM, but as a matter of normal tagging practice I don't remove tracks unless there's no physical evidence of something existing or having once existed roughly along the way. If there's a discernible trail following an old road bed I'll tag 'highway=path', 'abandoned:highway=track'; old road beds with no discernable/navigable path just 'abandoned:highway=track', and old roads physically decommissioned as 'razed:highway=track'; 'motor_vehicle=*' as appropriate. I use multiple satellite imagery sources, USFS GIS data, and high-res USGS hillshade especially (allows you to "see" road grades through forest canopy) in absence of a manual survey to make these tagging decisions.

Bradley

I'll be importing the boundary line from USFS GIS data with the result that:
- The LTBMU/Eldorado NF protected_area boundary relations will contain all land owned by the federal government and administered by the LTBMU & Eldorado NF respectively (protect_class=6 lands)
- The separate Desolation Wilderness boundary relation (protect_class=1b area) will overlay the two previous relations as a proper subset, rather than as separate mutually exclusive sets.

Cool, sounds like there's buy-in on overlapping protected area boundaries. What'd need to be done at this point is to reimport the boundary line between the LTBMU and Eldorado NF within the Desolation boundary and then correct the relation members. Gimmie a couple hours and I should be able to have this done. Day off today - just got back from skiing Tallac this morning, speaking of Desolation!

This relation represents a protected area rather than an administrative boundary - it maps land that is physically owned (and therefore protected) by the USFS as opposed to federally designated administrative boundaries. Desolation is a separate relation because it is protected at a higher level than other nearby federally owned land. The wilderness here would be considered jointly operated by LTBMU and Eldorado, with the exact line where the jurisdiction changes not relevant to the relation since, again, that is a federal administrative boundary rather than a change of name or protection level "on the ground". Were these boundaries to be introduced, it should be as a 'boundary=administrative' rather than 'boundary=protected_area', but that would be a question to bring to the community via mailing list or slack/discord as to whether this information should be included in the database, and if so, what administrative level these administrative boundaries should be at. Having stood multiple times on the ridge that splits the LTBMU and Eldorado management of the wilderness area, I can assure you there is no way to know there is a change in managment outside of consulting official maps.
Bradley

Hello thehedgehog,
I'm reverting this changeset since it broke the LTMBU NF relation. I'm not sure why members were removed from the relation - the members removed define the land ownership boundary and were correct. ID is undergunned to deal with these complex relations in my experience - please consider learning to use JOSM instead if you wish to modify complex relations in the future.
Bradley

Please don't forget to add 'expressway=yes' tagging when moving roads off the trunk<=>expressway tagging scheme. Recovering this information is time-consuming after the classifications have been changed.

Bradley

The 'motorway' tagging here terminates at regulatory 'Begin Freeway' and 'End Freeway' signage. This is unique to California and has been discussed with other CA mappers as an on-the-ground way to tag motorway beginnings and endings (osm.wiki/California/Freeway_ends). Please revert these changes back to the posted beginnings and endings.
Bradley

Hey Joseph,
It isn't settled that CA 299 east of Redding should be tagged as 'trunk' per discussion on #local-california channel of OSM Slack - if it were to be promoted, it would be in service of a Redding <-> Boise route, but would involve roads that have such low traffic & "importance" (per feedback from Oregon mappers) that it's debatable whether this should be consider a 'trunk' routing at all. If the goal is to orthogonalize roadway construction standards from importance this short segment should probably remain 'primary' with 'expressway=yes' for the time being, especially in light of contentious discussions in this area recently.
Bradley

>I've literally said 299/44 could be kept as trunk roads, and made multiple recommendations where the best place to not tag 299 as a trunk anymore would be.

Okay, this is all that's being proposed. CA 44 through downtown as 'trunk', and CA 299 west of Market as 'trunk' as well. If this is acceptable to you, then the classification debate is resolved, and there are no other proposed changes in this area.

To be clear here, I didn't mean to say that I think SteveA is acting authoritatively necessarily. I've never edited in Santa Cruz nor do I know anything about the Adamant1/SteveA drama arc. Just that, if A1 felt like they weren't treated fairly, that they would use that as motivation to act better rather than use it as an excuse to do the same to others.

It doesn't seem like this is going to be a productive discussion at this point. Leaving the tagging as is since it was the closest thing to an agreement that could be reached so far. While again I am sorry I didn't reach out to you first before making these changes, and I do respect and appreciate your work in the Redding area (one of the better mapped areas in the US imo), I strongly disagree with the sentiment that any area "belongs" to any one mapper in the sense of having an authoritative/final say, be it you *or* SteveA.

(Lots of "quoting" words here - I don't mean to imply anything when I do this aside from that these words are a bit fuzzy and could be replaced with a handful of other similar terms and therefore shouldn't be read strictly)

I feel like this analysis of traffic patterns through Redding is hyper-fixated on local Redding traffic, which is missing the point of classifying 'trunk' roads as "main inter-regional long-haul routes" (or some other equivalent language). It's true of every city and town that the "best" way to get in/out of town could involve many different roads depending on where you're headed. What's being proposed here is that, the way you would take to travel between Eureka and Reno (specifically for this discussion) should be tagged 'trunk', in general with more weight being given to higher quality, higher traffic roadways, as well as towards roadways that are part of a state or national highway network (to discourage tagging local arterial "shortcut" roads that are technically faster but not part of a major route). This is a world-wide mapping project and I'm really not understanding what this language regarding who the "target audience is here" is supposed to imply.

Traffic counts are useful for determining regionally what roads are "more important" relative to others but don't necessarily mean anything outside of that context. It's true of many major highways - certainly true in urbanized areas - that the majority of the traffic carried on them is for local or regional trips. This doesn't take away the importance of a route for serving as the "best" or "main" way between two significant population centers. As an example edge case, US 95 is a very quiet conventional highway that a solid portion of the daily traffic is related to local agriculture. However, it is unambiguously the "best" way between Reno/Carson and Boise, so it is promoted to 'trunk' under this tagging scheme. If we classified it based on the trips that the majority or plurality of the traffic on the road is using it for, it'd barely qualify for 'secondary'.

I understand there are many routing idiosyncrasies that are unique to Redding, but this situation looks similar to that of Salem, OR, which has the connection between OR 22 and Interstate 5 following a sequence of urban surface roads promoted to 'trunk', which may not necessarily be the "best" way for trips from Salem to the west depending on where you're at, but *is* the way you would recommend out-of-town traffic passing west through Salem to take.

I dropped the surface roads east of Buenaventura back down to 'primary'. I would like to try to reach a resolution however on what the "main" way is connecting the interstate/freeway system to CA 299 west of Buenaventura, since the goal of this tagging project is to develop a coherent network of 'trunk' roads in CA by figuring out these gaps. If you were taking a trip between Chico or Reno through Redding to Eureka, what is the way would generally consider the best way to get through Redding on to CA 299? I understand that downtown Redding is a mess and exactly what way is "best" depends on where you're coming from and what you're driving, but it seems fairly clear to me that, speaking very generally, one would recommend traffic to take Shasta/Tehama and Pine/Market one-way couplets to Eureka Way (CA 44 route).