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Highway types and names

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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”.

What does everybody think?

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Post by ColinsGoat
erablian wrote: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.

* 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”.
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"?
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Post by ColinsGoat
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"?
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Post by ColinsGoat
I guess we should revisit this thread in a couple of months?
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Post by ColinsGoat
dokterew wrote:Being from Saskabush...
What are your native Saskabushian thoughts on the 600-799 series roads? Do the locals call them "Grid Rd 799" or "Hwy 799"? Or something else? This still isn't clear to me.
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Post by doctorkb
EightBitRanger wrote:Makes sense for the most part but here's my two cents:

I would think the only freeways we'd really need would be:
I'm assuming you're only talking about inter-city here -- Circle Drive and part of Idylwyld in Saskatoon both count as freeways...
Pretty much everything else in the 1-99 category could be a major highway if twinned and a minor highway if not?
If it's twinned (i.e. divided, with at least two lanes in each direction), it should be Freeway. If not, a Major Highway.
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.
So... minor highway?
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'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".
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Post by doctorkb
FYI: Dirt Roads / 4x4 are routed the same as PS, with the exception of the client setting to avoid dirt roads.

I really wish we had seen the "attribute" dirt road setting by now... then we could have both Street and PS marked as dirt.
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Post by doctorkb
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...
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Post by doctorkb
Understood, dokterew. The issue is that we don't have the ability to distinguish three levels (dirt, gravel, paved), only two.
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Post by doctorkb
Ok, what if you were calling 911 and trying to give them an address?
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Post by doctorkb
Truthfully, in most of Canada, we'd have almost no Freeway (except within some of the major metropolitan areas) unless we made it work for our own purposes.

A lot of what we use the road classifications for has nothing to do with their UI name and everything to do with what they're designed for.

For instance, I just updated Saskatoon's roads to use both Highway types more - according to the map I found, these are classified as major and minor arterial roads, hence the update.
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