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Road classification update

Post by Riamus
This is just an update to let other editors know where we are at with updating the road classifications in northern Michigan, including updating the County Highway System. Please note that these are set to the minimum standard for each road type. There may be instances where they should really be a higher classification, but without being able to directly check these areas myself, I can't be certain of that. So although these are complete, there may still need to be some upgrading of roads to a higher classification beyond where they are now.
  • All area C county highways are complete.
  • All area F county highways are completed except: F18 and F19 down near Prescott (outside of my area), and F97 from St. Helen south (outside my area). If anyone can finish those, that would be helpful.
  • One area H county highway has been started in St. Ignace. I haven't done any other area H county highways and can't finish that one as it goes outside my area.
  • All arterials and collectors north of Roscommon are completed up to St. Ignace. This includes all areas from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron.
This should greatly improve routing throughout northern Michigan. More work is still needed throughout the rest of the state. For any editors who want to help with the classification of collectors and arterials, please see this for information on the NFC classifications. All collectors (yellow and orange lines) should be at least Primary Street, but can be higher if needed. All principal arterials (red lines) should be at least Major Highway. And the rest of the arterials (green lines) should be at least Minor Highways. In addition, all shielded County Highways should be at least Minor Highway. Note that this includes only shielded county highways - these all begin with a letter between A and H, followed by 2 numbers. Other county roads, such those in the format of County Road XXX are not included as they are not shielded roads. One resource for the County Highway System is here, though there are other resources that can provide better detail. You can also verify the routes using Street View and looking for the signs. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

Other work that is desperately needed throughout northern Michigan and perhaps other areas in the state includes correctly setting road direction and turn restrictions. Both of these are very often incorrect/incomplete and can have a large impact on the ability to route someone correctly. There is more to do as well, but road classification, road direction, and turn restrictions have the largest impact in properly routing traffic. There are also a number of missing roads from new construction that need to be added.
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Last edited by Riamus on Wed Nov 20, 2013 5:21 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by miked_64
sounds good
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Post by miked_64
I can hit Cass next as well, and VB should be pretty cloe to done on the east side. Can you PM any areas that you have concerns about?
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Post by miked_64
Western half of Barry County (ie anywhere i have AM privileges) complete.
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Post by Riamus
Wow. That looks like a lot of work. "Nice" grid of primary streets going on there. I'm sure that many of those really aren't valid, but it's been so long since I've been in Detroit that I may be wrong. :)

And even without knowledge of Metropolitan Parkway or checking the NFC, I'd say that's at least a Major Highway. It looks to me like a principal arterial at the minimum and possibly a freeway.
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Post by Riamus
That does seem a little excessive. And not just the Major Highways. That section where every street is a Primary Street by the bend in the river is kind of ridiculous. But I'm still all for using the NFC even if I think it's a bit crazy at times. As far as how it looks in the Live Map, the little bit I can see does look nice. Unfortunately, the Live Map isn't loading most of the area for me. I can sometimes pick up a section by zooming, but never the entire area. Not sure what's going on there today.
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Post by Riamus
lelehman wrote:Detroit is going to end up about as intense as NOLA, from the looks of it. I've started on the area that I have access to at the moment. This is what it looks like after I finished (or almost, anyway) adding the major highways. Here's what I'm basing it from - I have never before wished for a clearer PDF. ;) Should I move on to adding the minor highways and such, or downgrade most of these back to minor highways/primary streets? There was very little distinction between road types before I started this, and at the very least we might be able to get a good amount of feedback on how the routing is working. Agreed, it looks kinda ridiculous, but I can see how it would work pretty well. Since the NFC maps were updated in 2012 and should be fairly accurate, I'm willing to try this on a larger scale, if other Michigan editors are in agreement.

EDIT 11/3/13: Another editor reset about half the roads I had edited back down to primaries/minor highways, but basically anything you see as a minor highway in this area is a major highway on the NFC map.
As with other major cities, it can seem excessive in the editor. I think when you look at it from the client or in the Live Map, you'll find that it looks a lot nicer and that it works very well. Try some various tests with the routing in a few days once the map tiles are updated and see how it works. Northern Michigan is already using the NFC for most of the area north of Grayling and the rest of that area will be updated soon. I definitely think we should do this for the entire state as it seems to work really well even if it can sometimes look bad in the editor. And yes, it can be a pain to use the PDFs to figure out which road is which classification at times. :)

I'm not sure which roads were changed, but I do see some Minor Highways that were edited by sketch today. Maybe those are the ones you meant? I looked at the NFC and those all seem to be green roads in the NFC. Green would be Minor Highways unless there is a reason to upgrade them to Major. It could also be that the ones that were changed are already changed back.
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Post by Riamus
You may want to let that editor know that we're using the NFC so they know what's going on and don't keep changing things. :)
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Post by Riamus
There is a US discussion for changes to the Wiki that includes either the same NFC guidelines we're using or something similar whenever it is finished. That could be a long time from now. And until they do, the Wiki isn't going to change. We could set up our own state page showing how we're classifying roads in Michigan if anyone wants to do so. At least that way, we'd have it in writing until the US changes get figured out and accepted.

We've had various discussions regarding the road classifications in Michigan in particular and those who were part of those discussions decided that the NFC classifications along with marking roads in the County Highway System as at least minor highways was the best way to go in Michigan. Previously, just about every road other than state or US highway or freeway in the top half of the lower peninsula and the UP was just a Street. This left very large areas without any roads nearby that were anything other than Street. Not only could this cause routing problems - people were getting routed up to Mackinaw and back south just because there weren't routes across the state - but it simply looked bad. Using the NFC has cleaned up those issues greatly.

The Wiki itself is wrong and I think just about everyone agrees with that even if they don't yet agree on a specific standard for the US. How a road looks really plays no role in the value or importance of the road. If the state or county spends a ton of money on their roads so that every road looks like a high classification, that doesn't mean every road should be a high classification. And if a state or county spends basically nothing on their roads, that doesn't mean none of their roads are better than Streets. Functional classifications are the best way to classify the roads. If the road is functionally a principal arterial, then it should not be a low classification no matter how it looks. In some places, you'll never see a highway that would fit into the Major Highway classification based on the Wiki anywhere within 50-100 miles. That creates routing problems and is really bad classification considering the DOT will have chosen certain roads through the area to be arterials - main roads to be used to get through the area. Between editors who have been taking part in the discussions and the previous regional coordinator, it was decided to go with this classification. The new regional coordinator appears to agree as well with the discussions we have had.

Edited to fix some wording.
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Last edited by Riamus on Wed Nov 06, 2013 12:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Riamus
Can you give a permalink for that? I haven't really looked into how turn instructions work. I know that ramps create the exit instruction, but I didn't know there was a difference based on road classification. That may be something we need to look into with Waze.
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