Also, even in the above case about "Pyramid Lake Road", I would still probably put that as an 'alt_name' since it is the name of the scenic byway carried by the road, and not the road itself per-say. Example, a large stretch of US 395 through the Eastern Sierra is signed as the 'Eastern Sierra Scenic Byway', but that name would belong as an 'alt_name' and not 'name'.

According to https://nsbfoundation.com/sb/pyramid-lake-road-route-445/, that name applies to NV 445 only between Sutcliffe & NV 446 junction. I was the one that removed it. I lived in this area for over a decade and am familiar with signage there. It sounds like there are many names used for this road, which is the case for many state/US highways, which is why I try to stick to what is signposted since it is ground-verifiable. If there is no posted or adjacently-addressed name that isn't derivable from the 'ref', I tag it with 'noname=yes' since there is no ground-verifiable name. Alternative names, local names, historic names, formal/government names, memorial names, etc belong in those respective tags.

Again I think it would be fair to name this stretch "Pyramid Way" since all adjacent parcels are addressed as such.

Hello again,
Can I ask where the "Pyramid Lake Road" name comes from? There is no signposted name (aside from "State Route 445" etc) on this stretch of the highway. Locally it is referred to as "Pyramid Highway" but never heard anyone call it "Pyramid Lake Road". Doing a bit of digging it looks like abutting parcels are addressed as "Pyramid Way" and think that it would be alright to name this stretch that given that there is at least some verifiability there.

The NHS exists to enumerate non-interstate highways eligible for federal funding (which are constructed/maintained by sub-federal entities), and doesn't imply anything per-say about "importance" in the way the 'highway' tag is used in OSM. There's pretty strong correlation between normal NHS and 'primary'+ status yes, but it's not deterministic. MAP-21 roads imply any classification less so.

Hi there,
A road being part of the national highway system is handled with the documented 'NHS=*' tag and has no bearing on its 'highway' classification. The MAP-21 roads were introduced to the NHS to allow federal funding that hinges on NHS status to be used for urban roadways. It implies nothing about the "importance" of a road way as used in OSM (in this context, 'primary' meaning the most important urban roadways that augment the freeway system).

This changeset has massively over-classified roads in the Reno-Sparks area. For example, Kuenzli sees only a couple thousand vehicles a day and is only really used to connect neighborhoods near Renown to downtown. It now share classification with Pyramid Highway and McCarran, which carry 40,000+ vehicles a day in places and are nearly unavoidable if you are navigating Reno/Sparks.

There's no hard rule that there can't be "stubs", especially if it's at the expense of arbitrarily promoting local-access dirt roads to 'secondary'.

Can you please explain why this changeset upgraded Sunset/Bottari Ranch/Lower Lamoille to 'secondary', especially after trying to argue that NV 227 should be downgraded to 'secondary'? These are minor unpaved county roads that carry no through traffic.

Hi there,
I've lived in this area for about half of my life. Chickadee/Eagle Canyon is not even remotely an arterial/secondary roadway. It is a minor unpaved road that is not used for any though traffic at all. I'm happy to discuss but I will be reverting this.
Bradley

Hi there,
'Motoway' is used to denote a divided, fully access controlled highway (aka, a freeway) in the US. Please see here for California specifically: osm.wiki/California/2022_Highway_Classification_Guidelines

Hi there,
We have largely moved away from using 'trunk' to denote expressway-grade construction in CA (and much of the US). Please see osm.wiki/California/2022_Highway_Classification_Guidelines, especially the section on urban expressways.

The disagreement here is whether Ely counts as a "major population center" in the sense that it will induce the main E/W route to 'trunk'. In my opinion, maybe, but probably not. We're talking about upgrading 400+ miles of highway to 'trunk' on account of one town with less than 4,000 people. This is a super duper edge case with respect to the trunk definition given in the 2021 Highway Classification wiki page, which has had a considerable amount of voices in developing.

I'm not 100% opposed to this being upgraded, but the discussion needs to happen first and with more voices than just you and I, given the "edgeness" of it. Until that happens, yes, I am insisting that this keeps the same classification it has had for the last 12 years.

Yes, Ely is a "major" stop on the route between Las Vegas and Twin Falls - US 93 is a "trunk" because it is the best route between Las Vegas and Twin Falls, Boise, etc; not because Ely is a stop on the way. US 50 through NV carries *regional* traffic to regionally important population centers, but definitely not traffic between any two major metropolitan areas.

My objection is that one of the things settled on with the 2021 reclassification guidelines is that 'trunk' routes should be used to denote the "best" routes connecting major population centers. US 50 through Nevada isn't used preferentially to connect any two major population centers - I don't really agree that Ely counts as a 'trunk'-level destination, but I'm willing to hear others' perspectives on that specifically.

My point in bringing up the classification guidelines is that the bigger the change, the more there needs to be an effort to get some consensus. The point of making the effort to document all this (and to generally stick with the decisions made) is so other mappers can see the logic as to why a certain piece of road was decided on belong to a certain class, give a framework to discuss with other mappers if there's a disagreement, and hopefully, most importantly, stop switching road classifications back and forth ad nauseum.

Hello,
Please note the long-distance 'trunk' network, at least for CA & NV, has been mostly settled for a couple years now - see documentation here:
osm.wiki/Nevada/highway_classification
osm.wiki/California/2022_Highway_Classification_Guidelines

Major road classification changes in particular have been a source of "spirited"
disagreement in the past, so getting some community buy-in, especially for 'trunk' roads, is greatly recommended. The OSM community forum (https://community.openstreetmap.org) as well as the US Slack channel area both active. I will be reverting this classification upgrade, as well as 395 north of Alturas, pending discussion with the community.

Hi there,
This stretch of Pyramid Hwy is significantly more important than nearby 'secondary' roads and does not belong in the same "bin". It is one of the most heavily trafficked surface arteries in the metropolitan area and is slated for an expressway upgrade soon. I understand the goal is to have a connected classification network, but we're getting into silly territory here where a 55 mph, multi-lane, partially controlled access highway with an AADT of nearly 40k is classified under, for example, W 7th/E Golden Valley, a windy 2-lane back-ish road with under 10k AADT.

Hi there,
Would like to second the comment above - this does not meet 'motorway' standards for CA. There was a considerable effort a couple years ago to enumerate all motorway and trunk roads in the state, please see the following:

osm.wiki/California/2022_Highway_Classification_Guidelines

osm.wiki/California/Freeway_ends

Hi there,
It seems this changeset added a 'highway=path' tag or equivalent to any of the XC pistes operated by Tahoe XC that didn't already have one. To my knowledge riding in this area, many of these XC pistes don't have any trail they're following in the summer, and summer-use heatmaps (ie, Strava cycling & running) don't show any use over these routes in the summer either. When these pistes don't follow any underlying road or trail, they should not carry a osm.wiki/Tag:'highway=' tag with them, just the osm.wiki/Tag:'piste=' tags. Ski piste tags will not render on the main OSM tile map since ski runs are considered out of scope for the main renderer.

Best,
Bradley

To be clearer about roads being tagged 'private' here - they should be, and the reason that those changes were reverted was because the data working group reverted the entire change history of your account because of the mass data deletion. I would be happy to retag everything here as 'private', but removing valid landcover (natural/landuse) will simply be reverted again.

If you wanted to add all that you could - I think that would be overkill personally, but there's nothing stopping you. But the question here isn't what ought to be added, but whether things should be *removed* because they're on private property, and the answer to that is no, barring the sensitive edge cases given in the wiki articles you have been sent. The data added here isn't functionally much of a different 'representation' than the countless satellite images that exist to be viewed freely online. You're right that nothing to the north has been mapped to this level of detail yet, but that's mostly just because nobody has gotten around to it yet. For a close example, the Martis Peak/Juniper Creek Ranch neighborhoods also have extensive private forest roads that are mostly all in OSM. The easement/access issues you describe I assure can be found in numerous other rural areas that are also in OSM. That is the purpose of the 'access' tag. If the roads are physically posted as 'no trespassing'/'private', then they ought to be tagged as such in OSM, which will render them as private roads on the tile map and prevent anyone from being routed over them with the navigational tools. But no map or online tool ever stopped anyone from ignoring posted signage and driving in places they obviously shouldn't, which has been a problem in this area long before OpenStreetMap has even existed and won't be stopped by deleting data.

Hello,
First and foremost, I am sorry about the trespass and vanadlism problems that you are experiencing on your property. I have driven around this area for the better part of a decade now and while I share your frustrations about the inability of some folks to respect posted closures (and otherwise respect common sense courtesies), I don't have a financial consequence for the misbehavior of others, and again I am sorry that you are dealing with these problems. With that being said, it is a foundational principal of OSM to map that which is "on the ground" - the data that I have added was done so using publicly available satellite imagery and was not acquired by any trespass. Here is one article addressing why private roads are not subject to removal from OSM simply because they are on private property: osm.wiki/Why_we_won%27t_delete_roads_on_private_property. If there are errors in the data please feel free to correct them, but they must correspond to the situation as it exists "on the ground". For example, the short stretch of Russell Valley Rd through the SE corner of the private inholding in this area was marked as private by an edit of yours, but in reality (at least approaching from the east) there are no 'No Trespassing' or equivalent signage - just "right to pass by permission" signage which, by my understanding (https://www.bullivant.com/right-to-pass-by-permission-sign-may/), prevents a future party from claming an adverse easement over the road rather than closing access completely to the public. As I understand it, this is a legal particularity unique to California, where this signage/legal precedent is designed to balance the desire to allow public access to undeveloped land while protecting the private landowner from legal troubles in future development (posting the signage prevents a future party from claiming an easement). Hopefully this is understandable and I am happy to discuss further.

Best,
Bradley