Talk:Ro:Trunk

Please keep this page in English, so non-Romanian mappers can be later referenced to it.

This page refers to the usage of highway='trunk' on external roads (i.e. outside of cities/towns/villages/hamlets). Using trunk inside inhabited areas is highly discouraged.

Using the 'trunk' value in Romania's roads in OSM proved to be a difficult decision. The main reasons for this difficulty are:

• the Romanian road law specifies the "Express" class of roads which have a higher speed limit and should be in better shape than national roads
• European and Express roads have a higher speed limit outside of inhabited areas than the National roads
• poor state of the existing infrastructure
• European roads are usually only national roads with a total of 2 lanes, sometimes in a marginally better shape than the other national roads
• 4 lanes roads are quite seldom and only a total of about 250km of motorway are present in the road network (at this date Feb. 2009)

Because of these reasons several proposals to use the 'trunk' value have appeared.

• reserve 'trunk' for express roads only/do not use 'trunk' at all (since we don't have any Express roads in Romania)
  • pros:
    • one-to-one correspondence between road category and tag values in OSM
  • cons:
    • the 'trunk' value is wasted/reserved, even if is highly unlikely that Express roads will ever be built in Romania
    • European corridors are not visible
    • Romania's road network is visible only at high zoom values
  • supporters: alex-map
• use 'trunk' only for national/European roads/segments with a total of at least 4 lanes (2 lanes per direction, even if is in some cases the second lane is narrow)
  • pros:
    • roads in better shape (larger roads) are more visible
    • higher added value for the user - a 'trunk' road would automatically mean a better one
    • better equivalence with external roads and classification (since trunk roads outside Romania would be better than primary ones)
    • routing algorithms would prefer such roads to others in worse shape, making it more likely to obtain a better routing algorithm for driving
    • real world conditions are clearly represented on the map
    • other parts of the OSM map use the real world condition of the road for road tagging (Spain, France)
    • since only some European national roads have >=4 lanes, it would be clear that the higher external speed limit (100km/h) applies and can practically be obtained
    • improved time estimates in GPS units' routing algorithms (see the previous point)
  • cons:
    • not all European corridors are visible
    • for roads with frequent 2/4 lanes alternations, the map would look odd (although there are such cases in other countries, too)
    • will not show the higher speed limit (which usually translates in higher average speed) for the full extent of the (european) road
  • supporters: Günter, Thanas, Marinel, RobiNet
• tag all European roads, no matter the quality or the number of lanes
  • pros:
    • all European corridors are clearly visible
    • higher speed limit from the national roads is visible
    • most of the european roads are in better shape than the national roads
    • will be aligned with tagging at international level, where the current approach is to clearly show the national infrastructure
  • cons:
    • sometimes misleading, depending on the area, the state of these roads may vary (poor shape/very good shape, 2 lanes/4 lanes)
    • misleading, routing algorithms would prefer either of the roads part of European corridors, even if users generally prefer the ones in better shape
    • the time estimates in GPS units can be easily misleading/wrong since high average speeds on 2 lanes roads would be unattainable
  • supporters: Octavian Chelu, Max, Sorin, Cristian Draghici, Somebody902, Ciprian, EddyP
• abstain from voting
  • supporters:

Please add more pro/cons to the existing ones.