Actually there isn’t a clear structure how to map the highways.
I found the following sources:
a lot of information from the governmet : www.dor.gov.np
All National Highways and Feeder roads
also surface information : black-topped, gravel, eathern
OSM-Wiki : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nepal/Roads
classification : National Highways, … . urban roads
no information, how the OSM classifications : trunk, primary, secondary, tertiary should be handled.
Mapping status :
H01 (H01.3???), H10, H04, H05 as trunks
H02, H06 as primaries
Some Feeder roads : mapped as primary or secondary or tertary or unclassified!!!
My proposal :
all officially defined national highways (H01, … ) will be mapped as trunks
the ref-tag of national highways should be H01, H02, …. and not N01 or NH01…
Feeder roads ( as defined in source 1) : all primary and with relations
Using the relations it would be easy ( at least with JOSM) to make corrections for a complete road ( changing from primary to secondary,…)
If a distinction of Feeder roads as primaries or secondaries is necessary, it should be discussed here.
We don’t use the traffic volume for classifying roads. Where should these informations come from. To describe the roads more precise, we have enough tags like : lanes, surface, width …
I agree with your proposal. The problem with tagging highways in Nepal is the information related to lanes and speed. I think this proposal should be discussed within the community and we can find a solution.
This proposed new tag is not approved but quite often used.
Till there is a decision, how to classify the roads (trunks,…, teritary), it would be usefull to add to all already mapped roads the ref-tag (H01,H02,…,F01,F02…).
I think there are maxspeed definition for the roads in Nepal. But we need to make sure of it. I think your suggestion of ref-tag make sense. Will start tagging the roads
I have added the table of all national highways to the wiki- Road page.
In the last column you find how the roads are actually mapped(trunk,…,unclassified). This should be controlled and corrections are neccessary.
Three highways are uncomplete.
Specially the H09 may be false. The officail definition is unclear. (to Diktel or Salleri or Lamindanda?).
To find a good solution for the classification of the national highways, I make the following proposal :
trunks : H01,H02,H03,H04,H05,H06,H07,H10,H12,H16
primaries : H08,H09,H11,H13
secondaries : H14,H15,H17,H18
The road conditions should be defined with the tags : lanes, surface and maxspeed:practical.
All roads with the same rank or higher should be connected.
It is very strange when secondary road do not connected to another secondary or primary road.
The rank of the road is a measure of its significance so significant road could not be isolated and should be connected to another significant roads with the same or higher rank.
It allows control the connectivity of road with given rank.
For example here we can see many short pieces of isolated clusters of secondary roads (typical beginners errors) http://wowik.000space.com/routes/np/clusters.htm#level3
It shows Lists or the roads and how OSM objects correspond to it.
We can see road relations and ways, еhe total length or roads and comparison with reference list.
Here we can see that not all ref=H04 ways are included in the relation and total length of the ways in OSM is less than length in the list http://wowik.000space.com/routes/np/1.htm#H04
It would be cool to render such street ended in nothing (or not connected) on the map!
Only the end points of such streets drawn big in red or something like this.
As a new member I don’t know about this forum. Now I’ve escalated to the concern. I’m going to change those roads into ‘territory’ category. Thanks for your educational comments.