Do you mind if I were to go ahead and revert this changeset?

I would argue that the idea that these roads are being bypassed due to their at-grade intersections would further deter warranting making them trunk, since it can take up to 20 minutes more to follow a congested stop-and-go thoroughfare than just staying on the Interstate.

But regarding your justification that this meets trunk criteria, due to its intersections with other roads that I 66 doesn't link; pretty much every other US highway paralleling an Interstate does. US 1, 11, 13, 58 60, and 250 all do this in Virginia for significant sections of their routes through the state. There hundreds of other examples outside of Virginia too just like these. In many cases, these highways also have grade-separated junctions with other roads, such as US 1/VA 3 in Fredericksburg, US 60/VA 105 in Newport News, and US 13/US 58 in Norfolk. US 29 has a freeway-like junction at Fairfax County Parkway and West Ox Road, but you still have to cross signalized intersections to get onto an actual freeway like FCP or 66.

If the secondary routes these highways that connected to US 29 and 50 were other trunk routes, then that would most definitely make these roads trunk, but since the only other road that is just as important as these roads is Gallows Road (which is primary), this can't really be used as a justification for making them trunk.

Would you be open to starting a discussion about this over the tagging channel on the OSM US Slack? I'm still inclined to have this be tagged as a bus guideway over monorail for many reasons, and would like to find out if others agree to see if similar systems in the country should be shifted over to this tagging scheme (however, I am not aware of any other guideway systems in the US and this could be the only one).

I think primary is a bit of an over-classification for Bradley Boulevard, since it lacks the development and connections to other major highways that River Road and Old Georgetown Road do have. While River Road links Poolesville and Potomac towards DC and Old Georgetown Road passes through downtown Bethesda (both roads providing access to Interstates), Bradley Boulevard serves as a major collector road and only overpasses 495 without any sort of ramps to connect the highways.

Hello, welcome to OpenStreetMap! When making minor modifications to separate features in multiple different locations, try to upload them separately when possible (e.g. make then save your edits in Fairfax before moving onto another distant city or state like Charlottesville or NC). This way, your changeset will not create a box spanning various other places and won't appear in feeds like the OSMCha unreviewed changeset feed for locations that are within the box but you didn't edit in. Thanks, and happy mapping!

Hello, why was this minor street changed to a motorway? I assume this is an error.

Hello, please try to save your changes in one vicinity before editing in another across the ocean, that way your changeset does not appear in feeds like the OSMCha unreviewed changeset feed for other countries. Thanks, and happy mapping!

Hello, with the assumption that this was unintentional, please try to save your edits in one state before editing in another when possible to avoid creating a large changeset box like this. Not doing so causes your changeset to appear in the feeds like the OSMCha unreviewed changeset feed for other areas within the box, despite none of the edits being in the location that is being reviewed. Thanks, and happy mapping!

While this road is a continuous stretch, it crosses about 15 signalized intersections between the intersection of US 29, US 50, and VA 236, and the interchange of VA 28 and US 29 and has a speed limit of 45 mph, making it faster and smoother to bypass the stretch by briefly following US 50 up to I 66 and following it for a few miles down to Centreville. I think in some circumstances like rush hour, US 29 might be just as fast (if not faster) than I 66, but it is for most of the time the slower route.

Major highways bypassed by non-toll freeways are almost always most fit for primary classification. For travelling between DC and Gainesville, I 66 is the best route. I 66 is a (usually) free-flowing high-capacity freeway whereas US 29/50 are very congested and have lots of traffic lights, acting more like business routes. The only case it would be better to take the Lee Highway over 66 is if the latter has heavy traffic.

There is a part of US 50 that is bypassed by I 66 between Merrifield and Arlington tagged as since the Custis Memorial Parkway section of 66 is a toll road, making US 50 act as a shunpike. This would be one of the only rare cases for a bypassed highway like this to warrant trunk classification.

The whole of SR 844 is technically a freeway, and toll plazas/entrance gates are usually included as part of the freeway for consistency. Even if you're coming off or going onto the road for just 100 feet, it's still part of the gate approach along the freeway.

But on another note related to this changeset - where does the name 'A Road' come from for the roadway between SR 844 S and SR 444? Maps that I've searched up indicate that the name of this road is actually called Davis-Monthan Road (though it appears that it isn't signed with any name and appears more as a highway ramp, so it can't be confirmed 100% if this is the real name of it). Was this name sourced from Google Maps?

Hello, US 29/50 between Gainesville and Merrifield should be reverted back to primary because I 66 already serves as the main travel route through this corridor, being a high-capacity freeway. Trunk routes generally should not parallel freeways, which are more free-flowing and designed to hold more traffic, unless that freeway is exclusively a toll road, such as with 66 and 50 inside the Beltway. The mistake on my part was not noting that in the highway classification page while writing it.

It should also be said that the trunk network throughout Virginia, or at least NoVa, is complete, and there aren't really any further additions or modifications to it that will be needed now or in the future unless a new highway that warrants such classification is built.

That would be a mistake on my part. I've now roughly updated everything based on the future plans and what I could make out of the Maxar Imagery (with some of the ROW for the future road alignments visible).

Sometimes tertiary roads can lead to dead-ends if they're lengthy and have something of significance along it or at its terminus, but usually, short dead-end roads like these are better as residential or minor roads.

Hello, the initial configuration of these roads was correct as State Route 844 officially terminates at Gate 15A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_State_Route_844, https://web.archive.org/web/20131020052201/http://www.dot.state.oh.us/Divisions/Planning/TechServ/TIM/Documents/CountyMaps_ColorOn/GRE_color.pdf

JFK Drive/New Providence Highway link the airport with Downtown Nassau

Bay/Shirley Streets link Downtown Nassau to the ferries and towards eastern Nassau

Eastern Road/Prince Charles Drive are the main routes through the eastern side of New Providence

The highways south of Downtown Nassau form a dual-carriageway bypass to link the airport and eastern areas

Whoops, my bad. I've corrected the road access.

I did downgrade this section of GWMP back to primary for now, and am in the process of starting a discussion about these parkways on the OSM US Slack highway-classification channel.

The motorway classification is built on the grounds of physical criteria, unlike the minor-trunk hierarchy which is based on how regionally important the roads are and what places they connect.

The motorway section of GWMP between I 495 and the airport is primarily accessed by ramps and interchanges and is grade-separated from other roads and paths, with the only exceptions being a gated driveway to a US Park Police station at Turkey Run Park and a very narrow, low-speed section with an at-grade crosswalk for the Mount Vernon Trail on Columbia Island (tagged as trunk for the sake of filling the gap). Once GWMP passes the maintenance facility near the airport, the only other junctions with the road are at-grade intersections with Marina Drive, Slaters Lane, and Bashford Lane, which would collectively disqualify this segment from being a motorway.

As for Suitland Parkway, in my opinion the trunk route should be shifted from the parkway over to Pennsylvania Avenue as Suitland Parkway is another scenic byway maintained by the NPS that disallows trucks and similarly lacks an all-directional junction with the Beltway like GWMP does. However, I think some additional highway reclassification should be done in the area so that might deserve its own discussion.

Hello, a while back I downgraded this section to primary because it is a scenic parkway that doesn't allow trucks and is closely paralleled by the more-important US 1, therefore not making it a trunk road. It should be worth noting that the highways around Virginia and Washington DC are classified based on their importance rather than their physical construction. Trunk roads in this case are non-freeways that serve as connectors between two destinations of significance rather than just expressways (which are now indicated by expressway=yes tags).

For example, VA 28 has some expressway and even freeway sections (which are tagged with expressway=yes and highway=motorway respectively), but is also a surface street through Manassas or a two-lane rural highway. It does meet the criteria for trunk however as it links places like Herndon and Manassas towards Culpeper and Charlottesville.

Another example is Fairfax County Parkway which is fully expressway/freeway, but the reason it does meet trunk criteria is due to it being a major highway that carries traffic travelling between Woodbridge/Lorton and Fairfax/Reston.

The non-freeway sections of GWMP do seem like good candidates for trunk classification considering they are major commuter routes and bypass some of the Alexandria sprawl, but it's mainly intended to be a scenic bypass and lacks a full interchange with the Beltway and does not allow heavy traffic, each of which would be more convincing to make it a trunk route (and it certainly would be one if that were the case, and Us 1 would be the primary route), but for those reasons it's better as primary.