Hi, I am using openstreetmap to do some modelling work for air pollution and I also need to assign traffic data from https://data.gov.uk/dataset/208c0e7b-353f-4e2d-8b7a-1a7118467acc/gb-road-traffic-counts to the roads. But the UK government data assign the roads to major and minor roads. I wonder if there is a consistent way of linking the openstreetmap road types to UK road types (especially major and minors). Thanks a lot! asked 18 Jan '21, 06:55  Vera_ |
One Answer:
The OSM highway classification is pretty much based on the UK system. You can read up on how UK roads are modeled in OSM in the wiki: International equivalences and UK road tagging guidelines. answered 18 Jan '21, 10:11  TZorn |
The major road files looks to be 'A'-roads & motorways which will be covered by motorway, trunk & primary highways in OSM (+ their respective link roads). Also the geometries in the file are very generalised.
The minor road points are much more arbitrary & don't even necessarily cover 'B' roads. Some looks to be monitoring traffic at school sites or known rat runs. I think these might be much harder to use than the major sites, as many are located in dense networks of residential streets and cannot be used to impute traffic volumes on neighbouring roads.
Confirmed by some of the definitions here: https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/about