btwhite92 (2022-10-17 02:38:14+00:00): I'm not copying off of FC maps, which can be verified by checking the NDOT FC maps for the area. (Baring, my archetypal example of a secondary artery, is classified primary artery in the NDOT maps for example). My argument in a simplified example is that Pyramid is categorically more important than Sparks, which is categorically more important than say, Los Altos, which is categorically more important than Spanish Springs Rd. This is corroborated by NDOT traffic counts, road design, and my own experience living and driving in the area for nearly two decades. 

I understand that it "makes sense" that Veterans looks like an obvious thru-route from space, but the fact is that on the ground it's primarily used as an alternate route to connect NE Sparks & the TRIC with SE Reno; it isn't really used as an inter-regional highway so much as a major urban artery.

With regard to "collectors/minor arterials to tertiary/secondary" - being more rigid about setting collectors to tertiary and minor arterials to secondary to sharpen the "fuzziness" that currently exists in the R/S area necessitates the upgrading of a good chunk of current secondary roads to primary, which is what I have done. The roads I bumped up to primary are not minor arteries, and they carry traffic volumes double to triple nearby secondary arteries. If, for example, Baring between Sparks and Vista is classified secondary (which, as a road that functions as an artery rather than a collector, I think is pretty unambiguously correct), then Vista from Baring to the freeway *cannot* also be secondary. It's substantially busier, moves more traffic faster by design, and is thus more important. We don't have a node/mesh method of figuring out urban classification like we do with cross-country routes, so I think the next best thing would be to look at traffic data and road design.

Another good example of this problem is with Peckham and Moana - Peckham should be tagged secondary since it functions as a minor artery, but that would imply Moana at least between Virginia and 580 should be primary. Same deal with Plumb and Vassar between Kietzke and Terminal.

The classifications out here haven't sat well with me for a long time, I just haven't felt like spending time thinking about it and adjusting it until now, because I generally think time is better spent on OSM actually adding and improving data rather than fiddling endlessly with road classifications. Again, I am happy to participate in discussion about this and if consensus settles on a certain classification scheme that sees these downgraded that's fine with me. I have a handful of thoughts about classifying urban vs. cross-country roadways that I would be happy to share. But I'm not going to revert this just because you disagree with it, and I don't think the changes I've made here - which are, to be clear, tagging some major urban arteries (20k+ AADT) as 'primary' and a floating urban expressway as 'trunk' - are so out of line with US tagging practices that it warrants its own specific discussion when, again, I am intimately familiar with the area, have been contributing here for a decade, and have a relatively simple and data-driven argument (as much as there can be here) as to why I made the changes.