Proposal:Highway=quaternary
| highway=quaternary | |
|---|---|
| Proposal status: | Abandoned (inactive) |
| Proposed by: | TZLNCTV |
| Tagging: | highway=quaternary |
| Applies to: | linear |
| Definition: | Roads of lesser importance or upgrade status than tertiary, but officially in the same category or are meaningfully better-maintained than highway=unclassified (see below for redefinition concept) |
| Statistics: |
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| Rendered as: | As highway=road |
Proposal
Effectively split highway=unclassified, carrying the upper tier of it into this tag and keeping the absolute lowest-level roads in highway=unclassified.
Rationale
In the United States at least, classifications typically take the following shape: Secondary for state routes, tertiary for a few major county routes, and unclassified for anything less than that. However, this poses a problem; this scheme leads highway=unclassified to be too broad a tag if properly used. For instance, this tag places what may be well-maintained gravel county routes in the same category as a poorly-maintained township or National Forest route. This data makes it clear that the road is likely not a paved road, and is a more well-used but unpaved rural access route.
To be more direct, this classification would, in practice, differentiate the gravel roads you could probably drive on with an average car without issue from the ones that you'd get stuck fairly quickly on.
Examples
Unpaved county routes would be prime candidates for this designation. In turn, highway=unclassified would be shifted to the township roads, National Forest roads, and other roadways that are on the absolute lowest level of importance for a public roadway. This tag would be applied in a manner that, if a county route is paved but turns unpaved, the entire road as far as the intersection with the next paved county route would be listed as quaternary (i.e. dead-end roads that would otherwise arguably be tertiary would be placed in this category as well).
Specific examples:
- Grant Moore Road, in Noble County, OH: This road is a very wide and well-maintained gravel road, and can be driven on at relatively high speeds even with low-clearance cars (in my personal experience, over 25 mph in a Mazda MX-5). This road would be reclassified to a quaternary road.
- National Forest Road 431, in Pocahontas County, WV: This road is a graded roadway (graded meaning that it is purposefully constructed and maintained as a roadway in some form, rather than a jeep trail that forms simply because of off-road vehicle tracks), but is not much more than that. It is clearly distinct from an unmaintained track road (as these would be barely a lane in width), but is also clearly distinct from the above Grant Moore Road, and is also distinct from a one-lane paved roadway. Thus, this roadway would be kept as an unclassified roadway.
Tagging
This would, as stated, be a highway feature. Currently, highway=unclassified holds both paved roads and public roads that would be hard to drive on; making a meaningful distinction is currently impossible, as highway=residential, highway=service, or highway=track are not appropriate.
Applies to
This change would apply to ways.
Rendering
The rendering could be something to the effect of a faded highway=tertiary rendering (e.g. similar to a wider version of highway=road).
Features/Pages affected
This would affect the following features:
External discussions
Comments
Please comment on the discussion page.