OpenGeofiction
As the map below would show, I am currently in the middle of a project: to essentially design the Central Business District of the urban region of Xenica. (It doesn’t officially have a name, most locals just call it ‘the city’).
My progress so far has been quite slow, due to mapping most things out at level 19, where I am adding buildings, paths, and green spaces. However, that is not my concern at the moment. My concern is the street grid.
As you can see, the streets in the centre of the grid have been mapped out using the ‘tertiary road’ classification, and are the same width: however, I don’t feel like this cuts it for me. My main inspiration for this project is the centre of Saint-Denis, in the French Overseas Department of Reunion, which features buildings arranged in a similar manner to Xenica: it was a choice made on account of the fact that Reunion is a similar size, and population to Xenica. However, the street grid features different widths of road, and the centre of the street grid does NOT use ‘tertiary’ classification.
So, which classification should I use then? Is it ‘minor road’, or ‘residential road’? Or is it something else?
-Jake
Discussion
Comment from FictiveJ on 13 August 2018 at 04:36
Side note: Please zoom in to level 18 to see the actual street mapping
Comment from poweikao on 13 August 2018 at 04:49
Tertiary roads are usually used for “collector roads” only. For streets connecting residential houses, I suggest you use highway=residential, or highway=living_street for even smaller streets.
Comment from Luciano on 13 August 2018 at 13:09
I feel many mappers here definitely over-rate their highways.
Most city streets should highway=residential. For narrow, old-world style city streets I will even frequently use the tagging combo “highway=service” + “service=alley”.
“highway=tertiary” should be for the lowest level of what you might term regional roads. In US grid style cities, these are frequently your “section roads”, i.e. a mile apart. Look at a strongly gridded city like Chicago or Phoenix to see what I mean. You can see the same effect in Melbourne’s grid, for a non-US version, or Kyoto’s, for a non-Western version.
Comment from varnel_maiser on 13 August 2018 at 14:03
I may have fallen prey to over-rating my highways even in very recent projects like my capital. If you take a look here, this is a grid in Canada. the only tertiary road in the grid is the central road of the block, where the central residential roads branch out. This is the case mostly in suburbs of Canada in the bigger cities.
You may also want to make your grid more regular and square to improve the impact of the grid visually even more.
Thanks,
Zekiel
Comment from wangi on 13 August 2018 at 20:29
Another way of thinking about tertiary roads is that they’re the ones that buses run along, which aren’t already classified higher.