Road Types (USA) – comprehensive overhaul of drivable roads

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There's a nuanced difference between the definitions here.

A freeway has no at-grade crossings and no intersections (and no immediate access to adjacent property). There are no at-grade crossings on US-50 there. An "intersection" requires that the roads themselves intersect, not via ramps, but on their own. So, those aren't "intersections", and that's a freeway. There's nothing to stop a ramp from being at-grade.

For at-grade connectors, if we don't want to have to rely on the "signed, numbered exit" exception (which should be expanded to encompass all BGSes regardless of number), we can either (1) define it circularly, saying that every road providing entrance or exit along a freeway must be a ramp, or (2) change the definition of "at-grade connector" slightly, to include only those at at-grade crossings or intersections. The latter (2) is logically more sound, but then what do we do with situations like this?

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I like that way of putting it, but don't see "crossings" in any of the proposed pages.

There's a simple reason for that — I didn't really work on redrafting the Freeway rule, since I wasn't trying to change it. But yes, the definition of "freeway" should be changed to reflect that.

I'm leaning toward just using the "at-grade crossing" language to define a freeway rather than trying to define what intersects with what. I would argue that there are no at-grade crossing on US-50, thus it is a freeway and the at-grade connector rules do not apply to entrances and exits of a freeway. I would argue that for the RCUT and your example the main road does include at-grade crossings thus even if classed an expressway it should be typed as a major highway. For the RCUT you can cross the highway and you do it without a bridge by making the right/U/right, thus it is an at-grade crossing. For connectors to a major highway where there is no bridge (grade separation), one should look to the at-grade connector guidance.

"Crossing" to me means the road crosses from one side of the freeway to the other; i.e., it doesn't end/begin at the freeway. The reason "Intersection" should also be included is that it also covers roads that do end/begin at freeways — but only those that do at, well, intersections. Perhaps an "intersection" should be defined as "roughly perpendicular", where a road and another actually intersect, without the exclusive use of connectors or ramps.

I agree we should add "at-grade intersection" and "at-grade crossings" to redirect to "at-grade connectors."

IMO the current [[At-grade connectors]] page is pretty clear in its definition of what it is. We do need to add the exceptions for Jughandles and MUTI to the exception note section.

Question, since "at-grade interchange" is by definition impossible, should we note that, or just ignore it as a term to be searched in the Wiki? I could easily create a stub page to say road cross one another either in an "interchange" or an "at-grade intersection."

I don't know, should they redirect to Junction Style Guide instead?

I like the idea of the stub page for "at-grade interchange".

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The existence of the exit lane / deceleration zone may be decisive there...

I suppose we could say "no or very limited at-grade intersections" (and "no or very limited property access"), but I don't want to allow too much latitude. There are Interstates in Texas that intersect farm roads, or whatever, but they're still freeways. But even "very" limited becomes kind of a value judgment.

I don't know if it's worth even including in the rules, to be honest. The old rules already said "no at-grade intersections". The fact that US-50 otherwise meets the standards for miles on either other end means this is a special case. I don't envision anyone really having a problem with that being called a freeway any more than they might have had before.

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I think we need to consider converting the (too large for single page) Junction Style Guide being a basepage for all junction types. Then the sections of the JSG breaks down into subpages like the Limited Access Interchange already does today. IMO [[At-grade connectors]] should also be a JSG subpage. On the redirects, they would be added to the AGC page as "also known as" entries in the initial heading/definition section.

Into what, "Intersections" and "Interchanges"? It'd be really helpful to have those to link to from the road type rules. Maybe also an article on controlling turn instructions, or maybe that could be in the JSG itself. It seems like a lot of it would have to be rewritten, not that I'm saying that's a bad thing necessarily, or at least heavily reorganized.

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With respect to controlling turn instructions, I was asking whether you thought it should stay where it is, or alternatively whether it should become a separate page too. In other words, I meant to say "could remain in the JSG"

I think it's pretty clear that if we're going to split the JSG it should be into at least two pages, "Intersections" and "Interchanges". The remaining question is whether "controlling turn instructions" should be kept there, or whether it should be on a third page, thereby making the JSG into a short article with basically 3 small explanations and linking to 3 other articles.

If it's the former, we should put the turn instructions section at the end so as not to bury the arguably more important sections below. If it's the latter, it isn't really much of a "guide" anymore, I guess?

Woo, tangent.

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Yes. That's how at-grade connectors work.

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This is true of any segment, isn't it?

It would be nice if we could turn off the inheritance property. I thought that it was supposed to be stopped for PLRs. So it might not apply to every segment type. But it does apply at least to highway and street class segments.

It applies to every segment type... for now. In the current beta client, it's been removed for parking lot roads, which is fantastic.

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I reduced the font size of the page to see how it would look. I think it's a lot easier to read — the font size in our Wiki is pretty absurdly large, in my opinion.

I also think the "System of minimum criteria" might be best explained using a chart such as this:

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click to embiggen

Of course, many of these combinations are seriously unlikely (a US Highway will likely never be less than a minor/other arterial), and some of the data itself isn't finalized, and the final table will use Wiki markup and road type templates, but this is the idea.

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The treatment of unsigned roads may depend on the highway system.

Unsigned Interstates are presumably always gonna be freeways and are unsigned due to some decision by the state DOT, not always because of their functional characteristics. For example, the freeway portion of US-90 Business in the New Orleans area is unsigned Interstate 910 — LaDOTD doesn't sign it as such because they're putting a lot of weight behind its part as one end of "Future I-49". LaDOTD's functional class maps shows that portion as a "Principal Arterial - Freeways/Expressways", and it's a freeway. I feel the AASHTO wouldn't designate a road as a current Interstate unless it was either up to standards or grandfathered in (if, say, the shoulders are too small).

Lightly-signed US highways are still US highways, even if it's kinda hard to follow them just using roadside signs. There's an interest in having them labeled consistently, especially since they'll be Major Highways on either side of the metropolitan area. Downgrading a road as it travels through an urbanized area is one of the things we want to avoid.

Unsigned state highways, on the other hand, will differ by state. In my experience even the most insignificant "state highways" are still signed, but still, it depends. It may be valid to say that unsigned state highways should be set as Primary Street at minimum or maybe not even considered as state highways at all, I don't know. But maybe we just shouldn't worry about it.

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Related but different: State and US highways designated "Connector" should not be downgraded in the same way that "Business" and "Alt" routes are, since they typically serve to connect a main route to an Interstate or other major arterial. Likewise, "Spur" routes which are used as connectors should also not be downgraded — typically in state highway systems which do not designate "Connector" routes, like Louisiana. Possibly "Truck" routes should also not be downgraded — since they're presumably necessary for long-distance travel for trucks.

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Can we make the font size smaller Wiki-wide? I mostly did that just to see how it would look. I can limit the smaller size to the highways caution box.

Anyway, I reworked the language on Ramps. It no longer requires on a circular definition (retaining it as explanatory text) and removes the at-grade-connector-exceptions double negative. It's written in such a way that does kind of rely on some pages which are currently under development (for interchanges, Michigan lefts, RCUTs, and jughandles), so keep that in mind. https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/User:Sketch/Road_Types#Ramps