I have some thoughts that may be random and naive, but wanted to share them here for comment so I can learn more about this issue. I have some observations, conclusion, and suggestion.
Nnote has taken some detailed research regarding AZ FC and tried to apply it to the state. Being his neighbor, we said NM would try to collaborate on roads crossing state lines. I am in a dialoge with Nnote, and my mentee irowiki who is based in the Farmington NM about how we should do this.
What conclude (for now) by looking in AZ to see what they did I see two things I will try to describe more in a bit:
(1) Phoenix, a rather large city, is comprised of a bunch of Minor Highways and Major Highways. This seems odd at first. It seems biased toward having Major Highways every half mile or every mile or so. Take a look. It seems highly differentiated.
(2) Rural areas of AZ currently seem biased to be less highways and more primary streets and streets. So the major arterial between distant cities can be primary streets. It seems under-differentiated.
So, does this make sense?
I can see some logic for (1) in that if you truly want to provide differentiation in a highly populated urban area, you need to bring in more use of MH and mH to augment all the streets and primary streets with different levels of traffic and usage. If you don't do this you under-differentiate for the amount of road use.
It seems that (2) is a problem for me. It seems that it is applying the same rules (1) in a city like Phoenix to the rural areas. In that case, fewer cars go over a major road between cities than go down a neighborhood street in Phoenix. If you use that as the benchmark, then you mark everything as a street. That leads to under-differentiation in the rural area. I think from all I have learned as an editor that you need to at least have mH connecting cities.
So that was the observation and a conclusion about the AZ work so far, which, like all of us is struggling with how to apply a new FC in different ways. I think that what we don't want to do is look at every state's FC and apply it absolutely. We are working at least a national problem here about how Waze algorithms route users. It's not about how the various state's view the world. That's why we have a Wiki FC guide. Even with that though, there could be issues.
Given the observations (1) and (2) above, it seems to me that what is needed is a sliding scale of FC that provides optimum dynamic range (sorry, the engineer in me coming out) that slides between urban areas and rural areas. Our "dynamic range" is F/Ramp-MH-mH-PS-S-Dirt. That is a dynamic range of six (6) levels. If we apply that across all roads absolutely then we don't have enough dynamic range to cover both urban and rural areas. If we interpret FC slightly differently between urban areas (like AZ is doing for Phoenix now) and rural areas (like having MH and mH betwen cities all the time), then we create a much wider dynamic range for the whole country, probably on the order of a synthetic range of nine (9) or ten (10) levels. Of course this needs some flexibility to allow the transition and special cases.
I have always argued that very rural dirt roads can be street, primary street, or minor highway. This is an example of the rural interpretation of FC that allows better dynamic range in a rural setting rather than just typing everything to be dirt or street.
Hope that makes sense.
Nnote has taken some detailed research regarding AZ FC and tried to apply it to the state. Being his neighbor, we said NM would try to collaborate on roads crossing state lines. I am in a dialoge with Nnote, and my mentee irowiki who is based in the Farmington NM about how we should do this.
What conclude (for now) by looking in AZ to see what they did I see two things I will try to describe more in a bit:
(1) Phoenix, a rather large city, is comprised of a bunch of Minor Highways and Major Highways. This seems odd at first. It seems biased toward having Major Highways every half mile or every mile or so. Take a look. It seems highly differentiated.
(2) Rural areas of AZ currently seem biased to be less highways and more primary streets and streets. So the major arterial between distant cities can be primary streets. It seems under-differentiated.
So, does this make sense?
I can see some logic for (1) in that if you truly want to provide differentiation in a highly populated urban area, you need to bring in more use of MH and mH to augment all the streets and primary streets with different levels of traffic and usage. If you don't do this you under-differentiate for the amount of road use.
It seems that (2) is a problem for me. It seems that it is applying the same rules (1) in a city like Phoenix to the rural areas. In that case, fewer cars go over a major road between cities than go down a neighborhood street in Phoenix. If you use that as the benchmark, then you mark everything as a street. That leads to under-differentiation in the rural area. I think from all I have learned as an editor that you need to at least have mH connecting cities.
So that was the observation and a conclusion about the AZ work so far, which, like all of us is struggling with how to apply a new FC in different ways. I think that what we don't want to do is look at every state's FC and apply it absolutely. We are working at least a national problem here about how Waze algorithms route users. It's not about how the various state's view the world. That's why we have a Wiki FC guide. Even with that though, there could be issues.
Given the observations (1) and (2) above, it seems to me that what is needed is a sliding scale of FC that provides optimum dynamic range (sorry, the engineer in me coming out) that slides between urban areas and rural areas. Our "dynamic range" is F/Ramp-MH-mH-PS-S-Dirt. That is a dynamic range of six (6) levels. If we apply that across all roads absolutely then we don't have enough dynamic range to cover both urban and rural areas. If we interpret FC slightly differently between urban areas (like AZ is doing for Phoenix now) and rural areas (like having MH and mH betwen cities all the time), then we create a much wider dynamic range for the whole country, probably on the order of a synthetic range of nine (9) or ten (10) levels. Of course this needs some flexibility to allow the transition and special cases.
I have always argued that very rural dirt roads can be street, primary street, or minor highway. This is an example of the rural interpretation of FC that allows better dynamic range in a rural setting rather than just typing everything to be dirt or street.
Hope that makes sense.
Re: Road Types (USA) – comprehensive overhaul of drivable ro