We should try to use the same style for names and road types for rural highways. Here are the system I have been using, but I am open to other ideas. (While making this list, I referred to Wikipedia’s list of Saskatchewan provincial highways.)
Highways 1–99: “Major Highway” or “Freeway”. Name example: “Hwy 35”
Highways 100–199: not sure here, never driven on any.
Highways 200–299 and 300–399: “Minor Highway”. Name example: “Hwy 305”
Highways 600–699 (north-south grid roads), 700–799 (east-west grid roads). From my understanding/experience these are particularly well-built and -maintained gravel roads that can take a pounding from fully loaded grain trucks, but they are generally not the preferred routes for long-distance travel. “Primary Street”. Name example: “Grid Rd 675”.
Highways 900–999: “Minor Highway”. Name example: “Hwy 982”.
Makes sense for the most part but here’s my two cents:
I would think the only freeways we’d really need would be:
Highway 1 between Alberta and Manitoba.
Highway 11 from Regina to Prince Alberta.
Highway 16 from Alberta to Manitoba.
Pretty much everything else in the 1-99 category could be a major highway if twinned and a minor highway if not? And if sections of highway are fairly short and/or don’t go anywhere (Highway 60 branches from Highway 7 and stops once it hits Pike Lake. Short, and a dead end)
You’re right about the 100-199 section, there’s not really a whole lot to them. I’ve only been on 106 myself, and its pretty much like any other paved 2-lane highway out in the middle of nowhere.
Everything else seems alright. I try to avoid gravel in my car, but if I had to I’d be more comfortable on any of the 600/700 roads than most Alberta range roads I’ve been on. Used to take 647 a lot growing up.
I’m assuming you’re only talking about inter-city here – Circle Drive and part of Idylwyld in Saskatoon both count as freeways…
If it’s twinned (i.e. divided, with at least two lanes in each direction), it should be Freeway. If not, a Major Highway.
So… minor highway?
I’d suggest attempting to distinguish between “good” gravel and “bad” gravel and making sure the “bad” gravel gets Dirt/4x4 designation. Even “good” gravel should probably get that – Dirt/4x4 routes just like Primary Street, but has the added benefit of someone being able to say “avoid” or “avoid long”.
Sask highways and rural roads do need a lot of work still. Around Regina there are barely passable dirt roads that aren’t maintained marked as primar, single lane highways with narrow shoulder marked as major highway. I suppose for their local purpose it’s appropriate, but definitely not to the standards.
As the local you can do a great job of making sure we know how roads really are and can mark them as such.
I am searching for any kind of official classification of road types, but am having no luck so far.
Please start marking the dirt roads as such. That can be an important difference if people don’t want to travel dirt.
As you know, please message me if you need anything!
Im looking more closely and can’t figure why Hwy 11 from Regina to Saskatoon is not Freeway? If Stoon to PA is Freeway, this stretch most certainly has to be freeway also.
thinking this one through. I don’t believe the highlighted pieces should remain Major highway. If someone is coming to Regina from the North and choose to head Eastbound on ringroad they’ll take the loop. Only if you’re coming from the south trying to go east on Ring Rd will you have to use the highligted route? Should this be changed to primary street to match the criteria. I do not see an impact to long distance routing?
Just made the trip to Medicine Hat an notice hwy 1 is technically names incorrect. The westbound lanes are named “hwy 1 West”, and eastbound lanes named “hwy 1 east”. It’s clear why someone named them as such but it is not the named of the road and technically died not follow the road meningitis guidelines. I was able to fix up other gets named this away that had been unlocked for me but these areas are still locked.
Has there been any decision / consensus on this? I noticed that Google Maps Street View marks such roads as “SK-789”. Marking them as primary streets makes sense to me; should the other apparently nameless grid roads be categorized as just “street”?
Since all the roads are dirt roads, would it make sense then to categorize the unnamed dirt roads as “street” in order to give an appropriate weight to the routing algorithm? It seems reasonable for what I perceive to be their relative navigational value outside of the towns (although I have never actually been to rural SK…). Those roads seem to have more value than something equated with a “4x4 trail”.
Also, are we calling the named grid roads, i.e., the 600-799 series, as “Grid Rd 799” or “Hwy 799”?
Well, I thought we had decided to wait until at least January before degrading things to 4x4/dirt roads as the attribute setting was coming REALLY soon.
That said, we don’t have a choice – this is a case of poor labels. We wouldn’t map something that was as poor as a “4x4 trail”, but we want the “avoid” and “avoid long” dirt road setting to work in the client.
I’ve been caught by this in other apps – I spent about 5 hours on grid roads in Alberta about 5 years ago, thanks to Google Maps. It would have been about 2 hours on normal highway and 10 minutes on grid roads if it hadn’t tried to route me the quickest way…
Hi folks,
for what it’s worth, I took a few minutes over the weekend and took the cardinal directions off Hwy 1 from the AB/BC border to the SK/MB border. So it just says “Hwy 1” now, no eastbound or westbound.
Being from Saskabush, I would differ “dirt” roads from Gravel roads. many rural unpaved roads are maintained as well as highways, but no asphalt. It can be pretty hit and miss which ones these are and local knowledge can possibly be the only sure thing. Some grids go nice groomed gravel to clay dirt at a moments notice. Both are fine when dry, but get some rain and the dirt roads are impassable, whereas the gravel is no problem. Some gravel roads are the main/common route or #1 alternates from points A-B.
