Talk:Ontario/Highway classification

Questions and suggestions

• Rather than listing all population centres that qualify, and having an arbitrary 50k population cutoff, I would suggest to use Statistics Canada "Census Metropolitan Area" designation w:en:List of census metropolitan areas and agglomerations in Canada#List to determine major population centres. This would give us 16 population centres (14 if you roll Oshawa, Toronto, and Hamilton into one GTHA). Trunk roads would be those connecting CMAs and NHS core routes.
• If you do want a 50k population cutoff, then Welland or Welland-Fonthill also qualify. Would a route to Niagara Falls be primary or trunk?
• In Ottawa, the identified trunk route to link to the bridge is Nicholas Street, Rideau Street, King Edward Avenue. I take it this should include Waller Street between Rideau and Nicholas. I am not familiar with the area, but there is a no-straight-on relation mapped from Waller to Nicholas southbound 7324926 7324926 with except=hgv. Can passenger vehicles really not go from Waller to Nicholas, and if so, what is the designated passenger vehicle routing from Gatineau to Queensway and what should be tagged as trunk?
• What are your suggested taggings for city pairs like Hamilton-Cambridge or Guelph-Cambridge or Guelph-KW or Brantford-Cambridge? --Jarek Piórkowski (talk) 13:42, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Point 1, 1+, but keep Hamilton as its own population centre. Can also keep Sault Ste. Marie as a major destination for Highway 17 and I-75 from Michigan. We can use CMAs for Southwestern Ontario, the Golden Horseshoe and Eastern Ontarion, but for the north, there should be others too.

For point 3, agree. I looked over the area, but have missed out Waller.

Point 4, maybe keep them as they are now, in an increasingly dense area, nonwithstanding there's this future Highway 7 realignment (extension of Hanlon to connect with the Conestoga). Maybe consider the 401 as the primary connector between Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge at the moment. TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 19:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

For Point 1, in Northern Ontario, all noteworthy population centres are connected by NHS core routes. (The one spur from Hwy 11 into Timmins notwithstanding - I don't think its tagging is a big deal either way.) These are by definition the major through-routes in Northern Ontario so having NHS core routes be trunk handles this nicely and comes out looking intuitively "right". --Jarek Piórkowski (talk) 01:10, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

• Important former provincial highways

Highway 2 cannot be tagged as primary along its entire length. Much of Lakeshore through Burlington, Oakville, and chunks of Hamilton is a 2 lane road with a 50km/h speed limit. The QEW bypassed these sections in the 1930s and so it wasn't much of an important route for movement since then. Culturally yes it may be important as an original highway, but most people younger than 40 give a confused look if you mention Hwy 2. Example: https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=807949470140742 (Burlington) or Wilson St in Hamilton https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=534810107515773. --Kevo (talk) 22:30, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

If we're going by the using the tags in terms of importance, even though some portions of Hwy 2 aren't good for moving vehicles, they are destinations and often CBDs of that locality. Some may have significant pedestrian traffic. For example, portion of Highway 2 through downtown Oakville is a destination with several shops, the lake, etc. and has a lot of pedestrians during the summer. Also Oakville's CBD. Provincial highways used to go through historic downtowns and stuff since that's where the CBD of that town is. That's why I think they're still deserving of the primary tag. This would be the same for Bloor Street and Yonge Street - even though they are not good at moving car traffic, it's a significant commercial street and destination. Andrepoiy (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not keen on having road classification depend on number of amenities along it in urban areas. In many places it is indeed the case that main streets are also main roads, but this breaks down in denser areas. I would bring up King St in downtown Toronto as a counterexample - no longer a through route for cars, but a large destination. Yonge between Queen and College is supposed to be rebuilt starting in 2023 ([1]) and would also no longer be a through route there and would make sense to be downgraded then. History does matter, and to an extent influences the present: for instance there aren't very many good east-west routes through Old Toronto, so Bloor remains important to car traffic (I would like to see Eglinton also made primary once the construction is over, though). But in other places, 60+-year-old highway routings have lost significance with subsequent sprawl. And also consider bypasses explicitly designed to offload through traffic from the "destination" streets, like those around Caledonia or St. Thomas. --Jarek Piórkowski (talk) 01:10, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Jarek's comment. While historic routes provide context, they do not define its current use - daily throughput, it's current importance in the vehicular network (passenger and freight) as a piece of the whole, and its importance to intercity travel and trade. For example, when the Hamilton LRT is built, I will downgrade parts of King St back to secondary, as it will no longer be 5 lanes of one way traffic + a freight route. King's been a travel route since pre-European arrival, but it will cease to be as important in the network for moving vehicles - even if it increases in importance for transit riders, commerce, culture, etc.. Network hierarchy and importance shouldn't be conflated with cultural or economic importance, the question we should ask is something along the lines of "does it move a relatively high amount of people/goods and facilitate intercity movement?" There are very good reasons that Highway 2 was downloaded to the lower tier municipalities in Halton and Peel. --Kevo (talk) 02:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd say that when the LRT is done, it should continue to be primary: It would move MORE people than it would have before it, since one lane of public transport is just way more efficient at moving people than 5 car lanes will ever be. Why does it seem like tagging guidelines also follows the typical car-centricness of North America? Are people outside of cars less important? I think the map should be tagged with all road users in mind: and thus, primary would show that it's an important route, transit or car/truck. Andrepoiy (talk) 02:30, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm the first to line up to complain about Canadian car centricness, but the tagging norms aligning the highway=* grade with the importance to car or bus traffic come from the UK since the beginnings of OSM. Transit can and is mapped separately (with ÖPNVKarte, there is now even a fairly decent transit map style available on osm.org). Major transit routes, surface or grade-separated, can follow major car roads, but don't have to. And if you were to follow moving-people-on-surface argument to absurdity, busways would be mapped as primary highways. --Jarek Piórkowski (talk) 02:38, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

You're conflating the road network hierarchy that's meant for vehicles with overall road importance as a whole (economic, cultural, historical, etc.). King St (Hamilton), especially downtown where car movement would be severely curtailed with the LRT redesign would no longer be a through route nor a truck route. My main mode of transportation is walking - I live downtown Hamilton and lived in the South Core of Toronto for a decade without a car - I'm keenly aware of car centricness in Canada and am heavily against car dependency; however, the road tagging in OSM worldwide is entirely based on vehicles (like every road network dataset) and appropriately routing them between places. In many cases a higher street rating usually corresponds to a poorer pedestrian experience (again, see Main & King Sts in Hamilton that were decimated by oneway conversion). The LRT would be its own feature in the map with its respective tagging and is decoupled from the road. (edit: this would be important to our discussion Proposed_features/Highway_key_voting_importance "importance for the road grid (hierarchical position in the interconnecting network) instead of physical attributes.") --Kevo (talk) 14:21, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Highway 6, Hamilton to Guelph

Highway 6 from 403 to 401 and Hanlon from 401 into Guelph aren't mentioned on this page. Since we have a considerable list of explicit tagging recommendations, we should also specify those. The section between 403 and 401 is heavily used and with high average speeds, but has lots of intersections. Most of it is 5 lanes plus fairly good shoulder, except the not-bypassed section through Morriston is 2-3 lanes. By construction standards it's a primary at best, but by network importance it feels higher - should we have it as trunk on basis of connecting Niagara and Hamilton to Guelph and KW?

Meanwhile, the Hanlon is divided 2+2 but with at-grade intersections for most of it... so primary + expressway=yes? --Jarek Piórkowski (talk) 01:27, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

@Jarek Piórkowski: Actually, Highway 6 is on the list of trunks from creation, but I have that highway accidentally removed from the list where I should have listed the northern endpoint to be at the 401 near Guelph. That section's already trunk, but let's list that for completeness. --TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 08:47, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Former provincial tertiary roads and all-season access roads in northern districts

There are a number of "downloaded" tertiary roads which either provided year-round access to smaller northern communities, or at least connected to non-provincial roads doing the same. In addition, there are provincially managed roads that are not managed by MTO but rather Northern Development, such as the NORTs (Northern Ontario Resource Trails). Would it be better to mark them with highway=tertiary instead of highway=unclassified? I feel that while such use conflicts with Ontario/Highway classification it still matches the definition given by highway=tertiary. --CSCharabaruk (talk) 17:45, 21 September 2022 (UTC)