Proposal talk:Motorway classifications

Splitting classification between tags

I'm not too fond of the idea of splitting classifications between highway=* and another tag. Generally, I think that roads should only be highway=motorway if they are important enough to be a highway=trunk, and are also controlled-access. This does depend on the guidelines for the given region; in the United States, the 2021 guidelines place restrictions beyond physical construction on what can be considered a motorway, which somewhat alleviates the issue at hand. ZLima12 (talk) 04:35, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Along those lines, I feel like a better future direction would be to invent/propose a motorway=* tag (similar to expressway=*) that could be applied to highway=trunk;primary;secondary;tertiary that would indicate that they are built to motorway standards. Due to its high and long-term usage, highway=motorway would remain as a synonym for highway=trunk+motorway=yes. --Adamfranco (talk) 04:45, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

+1 to this over the current proposal. Alternatively, access_control=full could be used, which is more technical in language but doesn't risk confusion over the word motorway. expressway=yes already should imply at least access_control=partial, so I kind of like using access_control=full to build upon that. ZLima12 (talk) 04:59, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

access_control=full can also apply to "Super Two" roads like parts of US-7 or an expressway like some of the New York Parkways that have no shoulders, narrow bridges, and tight off-ramps that aren't up to interstate highway standards (though most of these are currently tagged as highway=motorway in the NYC area). --Adamfranco (talk) 11:46, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

This is a good point. I do agree then that it would be best to have a tag that specifically indicates that a road is completely up to motorway standards. ZLima12 (talk) 18:33, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Sadly it seems that motorway=* is already in use to indicate motorway like access restrictions. :-( I guess another key must be found. --Adamfranco (talk) 11:50, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

I like this idea. However, remember that, as they are defined right now, highway=motorway does not indicate a road's importance in the network. Removing that tag to roads that do fit the situation in real life is probably not a good idea. What benefit(s) would removing highway=motorway from controlled-access highways anyway? Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 13:16, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

This is not true under the 2021 classification guidelines. The collection of motorways and trunks are to form a network of the most important roads in the country, connecting large cities. Barring exceptional circumstances, a road that is isolated in the middle of nowhere should not be highway=motorway even if it is built to freeway standards. ZLima12 (talk) 18:20, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Question: Is motorway=yes rendered anywhere? I'd reckon that downgrading "dangling spurs" would catch the attention of some users. Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 01:34, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

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I'm not aware of any, but we shouldn't be tagging for the renderer. expressway=yes is rendered on OpenStreetMap Americana, which almost fully addresses the situation. Ideally we'd have a tag that would go one step further than expressway=yes by saying that a road is fully up to motorway standards, but currently we don't have that. ZLima12 (talk) 02:55, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

"we shouldn't be tagging for the renderer."

How is replacing instances of highway=motorway with motorway=yes "tagging for the renderer"? I could create my very own fork of AmericanaMap.org right now and edit the code to make any highway tagged with motorway=yes render the same as those tagged with highway=motorway.

"There's a need to clarify there [sic] functional class, while highway:motorway=* isn't a good naming."

Do you have a better way to tag motorway classifications, then? I'm all ears (the name highway:motorway was a placeholder anyway because I couldn't come up with something better at the time). Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 18:23, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I think that leaving things as highway=motorway so that they get rendered in red is tagging for the renderer. Using the actual class with motorway=yes is what I would like to see, even if the motorway part doesn't get rendered on carto. ZLima12 (talk) 23:54, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

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I like that idea too; in fact, that's exactly what my newer proposal, well, proposes. By "actual class," do you mean, for example, highway=trunk, highway=primary, highway=secondary, and highway=tertiary? Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 02:58, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

That's US only. highway=motorway is used for all roads classified as motorways legally in Eurasia, as extreme as Japan including 40 km/h narrow and tight turns (and connected with carparks, and drop-off) Urban "Expressway" (merely slighly higher standard than motorroad=yes for grade-separation) that can be worse than an ordinary road. There's a need to clarify there [sic] functional class, while highway:motorway=* isn't a good naming.
—— Kovposch (talk) 09:10, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that we should be splitting functional class out into another tag; we already have highway=* for that. If there was another tag, it would probably be a trolltag, since not all consumers would check the new tag. In the UK, where the highway=* classification system came from, all motorways are at the topmost level of importance along with highway=trunk. Therefore, I think other countries should follow suit and only use highway=motorway for controlled-access roads that are at the topmost level of importance. Then, for roads that are fully controlled-access but aren't at the topmost level of importance, a tag like motorway=yes could be used to tell consumers that this is that kind of road. ZLima12 (talk) 23:52, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

On the contrary, replacing highway=motorway with motorway=yes for them can yet be said as a "trolltag", and it breaks existing applications. It's not about controlled-access only, as they can be said as legally classified on the same level as motorways. While they can be physically worse than ordinary roads, they are at a higher tier than the average highway=trunk functionally and legally. I'm suggesting to distinguish between different highway=motorway only, as a subclass, not a lower class.
—— Kovposch (talk) 07:19, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I am not suggesting that we should change highway=motorway on roads where the region's mappers have decided that a certain legal classification means that something is a motorway. Those should remain as-is. I am strictly talking about roads that do not meet that legal classification or regions where no such legal classification exists. For those roads, we should have a tag to express that something is a high performance, controlled-access road, without having to use highway=motorway. That way, we can use the appropriate non-motorway highway=* value and still express the physical nature of the road. ZLima12 (talk) 21:16, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I mean. I see that you've updated the proposal, so I'd support it now if there is a plan for updating the existing data that uses motorway=*. ZLima12 (talk) 03:05, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

By "updating the existing data that uses motorway=*," what do you mean exactly? Do you mean making pull requests on GitHub to support motorway=yes, editing the wiki page for motorway=* to include some part of this proposal, changing all objects tagged motorway=yes to their actual classifications, downgrading all (non-trunk) motorways, or some combination of them all? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flap Slimy Outward (talk • contribs) 03:13, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

What I mean is that motorway=yes already has a meaning which is different from the one that you're proposing. So if we want to use that tag, we should vote to move the existing meaning of motorway=yes to a different tag, and then we can talk about using it to reflect physical construction. Alternatively, we can think of a different tag; there may well be a better one since "motorway" is likely to cause confusion. ZLima12 (talk) 03:23, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Actually, what does motorway=yes mean anyway, and how is that different from highway=motorway? Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 04:26, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

If you click on the rendered tag template it will show you the wiki page.

Notably, motorway ramps tagged with highway=motorway_link typically have a part where motorway rules apply (after start-of-motorway sign or before end-of-motorway sign) and a part where motorway rules don't apply (before start-of-motorway sign or after end-of-motorway sign). This can be mapped by tagging these respective parts with motorway=yes and motorway=no.

That page also links to Proposal:Motorway_indication from 2010 which is pretty much what we are talking about. Reading motorway=yes again, there might not actually be that much conflict with this proposal it it is mostly talking about highway=motorway_link+motorway=yes being for ramps that are behind "motorway begins" signs. Renderers could continue to treat highway=motorway_link+motorway=yes the way they do now and potentially add rendering for highway=primary+motorway=yes. It's a bit of a mixed meaning (behind signs versus road quality), but the highway=motorway_link are sort of a special case anyway that are part of the motorway system even if they aren't dual-carriageway themselves. --Adamfranco (talk) 05:08, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

It appears that the highway=motorway_link+motorway=yes combo is almost exclusively used in the Netherlands and a few spots in Finland. There is almost no other usage worldwide. --Adamfranco (talk) 05:14, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Legal not physical characteristics

The first sentence is: there is one notable exception: highway=motorway, which is applied based on the highway=*'s physical characteristics, but what people actually do mostly is tag based on the legal classification. Motorway is all about the legal status, a sign where it starts and ends, rather than physical characteristics. --Dieterdreist (talk) 21:51, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I live in the United States, where there is no such legal status for freeways. The closest I can think of is the Interstate Highway system, but even it has its exceptions even it has its exceptions. Also, unless you're in California, there won't be any signs directly indicating the start and end of a motorway. Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 22:53, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

As Flap Slimy Outward pointed out, this depends on the region. Some regions (most notably the UK, where the term originates from) do go by legal classification. However, in other regions, this isn't the case. For these regions, being able to specify that a road is up to motorway standards without giving it the importance of a highway=motorway would be useful. ZLima12 (talk) 23:34, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

motorway=* "is used to describe motorways that have motorway traffic rules and access restrictions". "An abandoned older proposal for this key proposed more extensive use", "but the key is not used like that nowadays." Key:motorway
Not highway=motorway , but I see that motorway=* should be used for legal classifications only, to be consistent motorroad=yes for the lesser legal class. Find something else for freeway standard. Or eg motorway:physical=* vs motorway:legal=* to distinguish.
—— Kovposch (talk) 07:23, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I am perfectly okay with using a different tag, and in fact I think that we should. For the reasons that you mentioned, and just the potential to cause confusion in general, I think that motorway=* is not the best tag for expressing the physical construction of the road. motorway:physical=* and motorway:legal=* help differentiate, but I feel like we can still do better. ZLima12 (talk) 21:19, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

If this is a proposal to solve a "problem" in the USA, it should be limited in spatial scope. The USA represent just 4% of the population on earth, IMHO undergoing such a huge redefinition to cater for a small minority is definitely not worth the hazzle. Just use any definition of motorway locally useful for the US, you do not need a global proposal for this. Below is a map of the signatory (green and yellow) and ratification (green) countries of the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, and you can also find an OpenStreetMap-curated list of countries who use the legal criterion (sign) to map motorways.

By the way, it's better to use zone:traffic=XX:motorway and not "motorway:legal=*".--Pavvv (talk) 10:52, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

It is true that the author of the proposal along with a few other participants here (including myself) are from the US, but I don't think that the issue only affects this country. I don't suggest changing all highway=motorways; I only would like an additional tag that can express that a road is built to high-performance standards (like a motorway), without saying anything about the importance of the road (highway=motorway implies that the road is of the highest importance). Any road that meets the region-specific criteria for highway=motorway shall not be affected. ZLima12 (talk) 21:23, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

"The USA represent just 4% of the population on earth [...] a huge redefinition to cater for a small minority is definitely not worth the hazzle." Bro, the US is the third-most populated country in the world, behind India and China, which have over 1 billion people, the US having ~340 million. I wouldn't call that a "minority" in any sense of the word, especially when there are ~200 countries (depending on what you call a country), so this is not a valid premise. Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 02:38, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Remove rendering discussion

This is NOT a rendering proposal -- please remove the rendering stuff, as it only confuses the matter. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 02:25, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

At the least, it should be changed to "example rendering". ZLima12 (talk) 02:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I straight-up copied the template from the Proposal process page. What would be an example of a rendering proposal? Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 03:02, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

The "| appearance = " line should probably also be removed from the proposal box. ZLima12 (talk) 03:31, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I know it's in the template (should fix that), but tag proposals don't change any rendering. That has to go in the issue tracker of the renderer in question. Your rendering discussion just doesn't make any sense for what's being proposed. Just stick to the tag changes. However, you can and should discuss impacts to renderers and data consumers. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 10:37, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Okay, I will go ahead and remove that tagging. I'm not too terribly focused on rendering right now, but it is something I want to consider should this proposal move further. Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 18:34, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

highway=motorway

Under Features/Pages affected, there is the following text:

highway=motorway would (basically) be replaced with motorway=yes

highway=motorway shouldn't be getting replaced. I would say that, depending on the region, all instances of highway=trunk+motorway=yes should instead simply be tagged highway=motorway, or there should be some region-specific distinction between these two. In the latter case, highway=motorway could be reserved for a special class or network of roads, such as Interstates in the US. ZLima12 (talk) 02:56, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Why do you think trunk roads built up to freeway standards should remain tagged as highway=motorway? Wouldn't this result in inconsistencies? Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 03:07, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I think there isn't a good reason to change from the existing tag when it works properly. Deprecating the well established highway=motorway would require retagging over a million ways and changing almost all OSM road software for essentially no benefit. Most motorways are at the trunk importance level, so we should leave them as-is. My mention of reserving highway=motorway for a special class or network of roads is basically what the word motorway is; in the UK, motorways are like the Interstate system. So, I think that by default, no ways should be tagged with highway=trunk+motorway=yes; later, if a region decides on a distinction between this and highway=motorway, they can use that tag combination. ZLima12 (talk) 03:20, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

A +1 for Zlima12's last comment. Just consider highway=motorway as a special case shortcut that means highway=trunk + motorway=yes. If you try to deprecate highway=motorway, a tag that is already working for this meaning and heavily used, then this proposal will wildly fail. As some of the European folks have noted, "motorway" may be a legal definition for top-importance + top-quality roads and may be a really good fit for their reality. Also, widely changing existing roads tagged as highway=motorway will require every single OSM renderer and router to change to handle the new tagging, something that just isn't going to happen easily if ever. Instead of trying to change that working tag to achieve ideal tag syntax, focus on describing the thing that we don't have a way to describe in OSM yet: motorway quality roads with highway=primary or lower importance. Being able to tag the quality of these roads that are often now seen as motorway islands or dead-end motorway spurs that lead only to highway=primary is what is really missing. Try to do the incremental small thing that is easier to justify and won't cause huge additional problems and this proposal or one like it might just be successful. --Adamfranco (talk) 04:44, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Okay, I'm willing to do that. I'd much rather not break hundreds of websites, apps, and software that use the highway=motorway tag. As for Europe, I won't make any changes there regarding motorways, since this proposal is mainly for the USA. Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 05:06, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Adamfranco: I went ahead and removed the tag highway:motorway=trunk from any ways containing such tags. As for the ones tagged highway:motorway=primary, I left most of them as-is for right now as a temporary placeholder until I figure out what the consensus should be for them. As an experiment, I retagged U.S. 95 Business northwest of Rainbow Blvd. and U.S. 93 Business east of I-11 as highway=primary + motorway=yes, since they leave "dangling spurs." I haven't retagged SR 613 because it doesn't leave a dangling spur like the others do. I'm not sure what to do with SR 171 or SR 564 yet, so I'll just leave them as-is until someone comes up with an idea. Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 18:26, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

expressway=*

Since it has been noted that "motorway" is often associated with legal definitions, perhaps we could extend the use of expressway=* instead. "Expressway" is often used to talk about roads that have intermediate performance (limited access but not controlled-access), but it can also be used (regionally) to refer to full controlled-access roads (e.g. the Long Island Expressway). What if we introduced a new value to expressway=*, such as expressway=full, which would reflect this other meaning of expressway? This tag would work pretty much the same as the currently proposed motorway=yes. ZLima12 (talk) 21:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I discussed it, but as an disagreement with expressway=* https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/lets-talk-about-highway-classification-in-osm/136125/174
Asked about splitting the topic https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/lets-talk-about-highway-classification-in-osm/136125/214
But as asked on Discourse, do you want to discuss US only, or international? https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/rfc-feature-proposal-motorway-classifications/137119/13
—— Kovposch (talk) 04:48, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I have drafted a proposal to extend the expressway=* key here. I tried to make it applicable internationally. ZLima12 (talk) 06:05, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

My comments on this proposal

I'm not entirely sure this proposal is necessary. It seems that the only major issue with tagging spurs, isolated routes, and relatively unimportant freeways as motorways is that when they're rendered on the map, they look unpleasant. You could say the same about random disconnected trunk roads—they look ugly and confusing when improperly connected to the trunk network—but the real issue is not that they look ugly, but rather that it doesn't make sense from a routing perspective to have a road jump between levels of importance. The singular issue with tagging disconnected controlled-access highways a motorways is that, since they render at the same level as trunk roads, they don't look coherent from a glance, at least to some people. We don't tag for the renderer, though.

The 'highway=motorway' tag is only called such because OSM hails from the UK and thus the tags are inevitably UK-centric. The other reason our motorway tagging scheme is all over the place in the US, aside from "motorway" not being in our daily lexicon as Americans, is that in most countries, particularly those in Europe, motorways actually are designated exclusively as motorways. In the US, an OSM-motorway could be an Interstate, a U.S. Route, a state highway, a county road, a completely undesignated roadway, and so on. Since we don't have this clear distinction unlike Europe, I feel like it should be straightforward that when a road is high-speed, dual-carriageway, and fully-controlled-access, it's a freeway, thus a motorway. This lets the end user understand whether by reading or listening to router data or by simply looking at the map that the road they're going to use is a freeway which is a very universal concept. I understand that we don't particularly tag for the router, either, and it's up to the third-party service to decide how to interpret the data that we create, but creating a new tag that we have to expect routers to adopt when a well-established, very similar tag exists is creating problems over, at least from what I perceive it as, pedantry and a subjective opinion that only a select few mappers have. These issues are;

• losing distinct rendering for roads that are distinct in their own right from other roads by having freeways appear the same as surface streets and non-freeway highways;

• waiting for routers to adopt this new tag (and hoping it even becomes widespread in the first place, which, outside of the US, it likely won't);

• making the road tagging scheme more difficult to understand than it already is for newer mappers, those unfamiliar with the road hierarchy, or even end users;

• further disconnecting the US road hierarchy from the rest of the world than it already stands as.

I strongly disagree with the implication that a motorway is always important as a trunk road, because there are plenty of highways that are obviously freeways but don't serve as long-haul routes between major destinations, or, in other words, serve a role in the trunk network. Take for example:

• U.S. Route 6 between Scranton and Carbondale, PA, spurs off of a junction of multiple Interstates and is tagged as a motorway for its lengthy 15.5 mi route, before downgrading to primary when it becomes a two-lane highway which only serves other small rural towns, with no other motorways, trunk routes, or major 'trunk' destinations within a reasonable distance of this point.

• Summerlin Parkway in Las Vegas, NV heads west—east within the CC 215 beltway and links the suburban development of Summerlin towards U.S. Route 95 and Downtown Las Vegas, thus not serving any actual role as a long-haul road like a trunk road. If we pretended it was something like an expressway with at-grade intersections, it would likely be primary for this reason.

• The Wilmington Bypass in Ohio carries State Route 73, a highway that is tagged as primary for the majority of its route, except for concurrencies and this freeway bypass section, because does not serve any actual role in transporting long-haul traffic between major cities, but rather follows an indirect route between smaller towns. As a consequence, this motorway is completely isolated from other motorways and trunk roads.

These examples are all obvious freeways. They are distinct from the non-freeway roads that they lead to, and if you were to drive along them, it is likely that you would interpret them as freeways.

In conclusion, while it is confusing to position every controlled-access highway as motorway due to the fact that it creates all these stubs and islands and such, we're making the best of what we can with our convoluted highway system, It will be even more confusing to force a distinction just so that they render nicer and you won't have to look at motorway stubs. Joseph R P (T • C) 00:22, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

The real issue I'm trying to solve is that, in some places like the US, motorway does not correspond to a role in the road network. The talk about removing dangling spurs is a slightly different matter entirely; someone else pointed out that rendering issues should be resolved separately. At no point does my proposal imply that motorways are trunk roads; this mostly came from other users. Showing end users what the classification of motorways should be if they weren't built to freeway standards could prevent them from tagging highways transitioning between freeway and arterial road as trunk, as you've pointed out a few times before. Flap Slimy Outward (talk) 03:14, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

@Flap Slimy Outward: I didn't intend to imply that you're implying that motorways are at the same level as trunk roads—those comments are directed towards that sentiment in general which was also expressed here and has been elsewhere in the past.

My comments, to summarize them, is that although it is messy and may be confusing to some routers to tag likely unimportant roads that are built up to freeway standards as motorways, we are making the best of what we can with a Euro-centric road classification hierarchy in the US, and to those who are knowledgeable of roadways and willing to put it in the effort and micromanagement, there may be a better solution. However, I also note that it will likely overcomplicate things more and is probably just overthinking it all to try to solve these issues rather than deal with the minor problems that are how these particular roads render and how third party services decide to interpret our data. Ultimately, the best solution may be to leave things as-is, and continue our typical case-by-case strategy of identifying specific roadways and classifying them based on guidelines, personal judgment, and/or consensus instead of trying force a new convoluted schematic that's intended to be universal.

Additionally, I think the "this motorway would be primary/secondary/tertiary if not a freeway" acknowledgement really only matters when we're talking about classifying the roads that link isolated motorways to other motorways. For example, I wouldn't classify SR 73 coming up on the Wilmington Bypass as trunk if we were to assume the bypass tagged as a motorway is just as important as another primary road when other mappers who do generally assume that every motorway is as important as a trunk route may think so.

That said, I think your initial proposal to have a sort of internal hierarchy of motorways (i.e. motorway=primary, etc.) is a good idea—but only if the entirety of the world were to use the motorway classification for every controlled-access highway of the sort. It would be helpful in deciphering what role each motorway serves in the road network as a freeway, but this tag would serve almost no purpose in most other countries, where the vast majority of legally-designated motorways are of the same importance as trunk roads. Because of that, renderers and routers would likely never catch on. Another issue is how contentious this sort of scheming would be, as how important a freeway appears to be is more subjective than how important a non-freeway road is, since they all are characteristically the same, but have different variables to be considered, such as HGV access, tolls, whether it is useful to through traffic or just a controlled-access business loop-like road, etc. Look at a city with more freeways crisscrossing it than a freeway-light city such as Vegas, and it will be noticeably more difficult to pinpoint which freeways are more "trunk-like" than others. Also adding to the difficulty is that in urban areas, a freeway will almost always have an absurdly higher amount of traffic than any surface street. It may be a defeatist thing to say, because there is almost always a way to tag something in OSM, but with how inconsistent the US is with how freeways are built and signed, it will unfortunately be very difficult, time-consuming, and contentious to try to apply a national standard in how to use a tag like this. Joseph R P (T • C) 19:27, 28 October 2025 (UTC)