Wikipedia is not a reliable source for information on exact highway routings. Ground signage and state databases (https://maps.udot.utah.gov/uplan_data/documents/HRO/ for Utah) are much more reliable, although still not infallible.

Exactly. The only reason this stretch of road is primary is that it serves as the northbound off-ramp from I-15 to 3300 S. In fact, the fact that we have incomplete interchanges here is the only reason why it's primary. If there were an on-ramp to access 3300 S directly from I-15 northbound then that would be the primary route.

The reason this road is primary is that there is no corresponding interchange to 3300 S from northbound I-215 to the one from southbound I-215. 3300 S is the primary road in the area, and this part of Wasatch Boulevard serves as the access to 3300 S from I-215. Reverting this change as it breaks this primary connectivity (and the related change that upgrades 3900 S to primary since it doesn't serve a primary function here)

*SR-201, not SR-210 (which is the road up little cottonwood). The continuation of the freeway section of SR-201 is functionally I-80, not this surface street.

Really, I find that a highway designation is a pretty meaningless indicator of what functional class the road should be. There's a correlation for sure (highways are more likely to be primary), but the cause and effect is reversed. Just because a road is maintained by the state doesn't make it inherently more or less important than a road maintained by the city or county; the current classification guidelines are designed to take into account the road's characteristics and importance more than the designation.

Why did you upgrade this section 2100 S to primary? I see no world where the road is primary: it's been bypassed as a through route by SR-201 and I-80, it does not have exceptionally high traffic volumes compared to nearby secondary roads like 1300 S or 1300 E, it does not "feel" like a primary road in terms of things like speed limits and road widths, and it doesn't serve an important through route. I've reverted the classification to secondary.

This one I definitely disagree with (I'm the one who upgraded the northbound lanes to tertiary). The reason for this has to do with the one-way configuration of 600 S and 500 S in this area.

All westbound traffic on 600 S is forced to make a northbound turn onto 600 E. Due to the configuration of roads in the area this is not an uncommon movement to make. Thus, the northbound section of 600 E here serves more than just local traffic: it serves a decent portion of the traffic that wants to access either westbound 400 S or 500 S.

In contrast, the southbound section of 600 E in this area serves no such purpose: it's the definition of an unclassified road that serves no purpose beyond local access to the businesses along it (or a bike route, but that's irrelevant to road class). This is borne out in my experience driving and biking in this area: the northbound lane has easily at least twice the traffic of the southbound lane.

The most up to date guidance for classifying US roads is located here: osm.wiki/United_States/2021_Highway_Classification_Guidance, and this page states that "Lower classification [secondary or lower] levels should be applied to roads based on their relative importance to local transportation."

The classification that you mentioned works well in the eastern US or in Europe, but is a terrible fit for the western US due to how much lower density the region is. That's why the western US has been moving away from that, in my experience and from what I know.

So the purpose of these classifications is as follows: trunk roads are the most important routes intothe major towns and cities: my definition for this is approximately >20,000 people. Primary roads serve as links between the mid-sized towns (~2000-20000 people), while secondary roads link the smaller towns and serve the less-important links between larger towns and cities.

This leaves tertiary roads in rural areas to link unincorporated communities or somewhat important destinations (e.g. major parks) to each other, and also to represent roads that could reasonably be used as through roads. Tertiary roads can also be distinguished from lower classification roads by their characteristics: in general they're designed for higher-capacity travel than unclassified or residential roads, often including features like striping or higher speed limits.

Then unclassified for roads that really have no reason to be used for any through traffic that don't serve primarily residential usage (e.g. farming, recreation, logging, etc.), and residential for roads that just serve residential uses.

Does that help answer your question?

I should add that the reason it takes me so long to do this that I have to pretty much do it on a case by case basis if I want to have any accuracy :)

Land ownership boundaries are a portion of it. Combining that with aerial imagery, street-level imagery, and (in places I have it) local knowledge.

Technically there's a few roads on USFS, BLM, or state land that might be inaccessible, but these are few and far between so that vast majority of time any road or path on public land is going to be public.

With private land, some landowners appear to be fine with letting people cross their land, and some don't. Generally for private land I look for the presence of gates or no trespassing signs to confirm that the land is inaccessible. All the roads/tracks/paths I tag as private I've found something to indicate that the land is likely posted no trespassing or gated. I'm only one person so I'm bound to make the occasional mistake, but that's my methodology that I believe should be pretty thorough. Does that answer your question?

Note that some of the tracks I marked as private do cross public BLM land, but as far as I can tell there's no way to actually access these tracks without crossing private or closed tracks

For sure! I don't really follow the forums because 9/10 times the topics won't be related to the things that I map.

But I'm mostly aligned with you on the tagging method for these types of paths. If it's an informal path that I'm not super familiar with, I'll usually use highway=path, informal=yes, surface=ground. In my view the surface tag is one of the most important tags, as it seems to be one of the most common that external applications (e.g. Gaia GPS, Strava) make heavy use of from OSM data.

Side note, I see people using the incorrect surface=dirt tag in the Wasatch and it bugs me more than it should haha. Pretty much none of our paths save for a few flowy mountain bike trails are actually manicured dirt like the tag is designed for; it's almost always just whatever the natural ground happens to be in the area. I've been over time correcting these surface=dirt tags to surface=ground, but there's a ton of them and I haven't gotten to all of them yet.

In areas close to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail https://stateofthebst.org/explorer/ is a very helpful website for determining public access

Ok, I think I figured out what happened:

The name "Brushy Springs Trail" comes from the official USFS map, but the USFS map itself has the trail descending into the basin east of Box Elder Peak and south of Bob Stewart Peak. However, I was unable to find any trace of the trail on the Strava heatmap or on any aerial imagery, so it doesn't seem to actually exist in most places.

The part that remains on the map is the one part of the official Brushy Springs Trail that appears to actually exist nowadays, between the main ridge and Bob Stewart Peak. The extra bit that I accidentally deleted is not part of the Brushy Spring trail; seems like I probably meant to mark it as informal but instead deleted it entirely accidentally.

Oh weird not sure what happened there; looks like I somehow accidentally deleted some of the path unintentionally!

Love this idea; I think the wiki is an underutilized resource. My free time has been a bit limited lately, but I'll contribute to your new page when I can.

Eh, I think the bar for tertiary should be pretty low. That's the point of having the four main classification levels :) it allows the more important local roads such as these to be classified as more important than the surrounding purely residential streets.

I like to classify by a mix of function and form. By function I mean do the roads serve a useful connection in the road network or high traffic volumes. By form I mean do the roads actually support carrying a high volume of traffic or appear as more major roads.

To take an example of yours, Vine Street west of Murray Boulevard is clearly more important than the surrounding residential streets, as it provides access from the main roads into the neighborhood and serves as one of the two main routes to the elementary school there. In addition, it is striped with a middle line and is clearly wider/meant to serve more traffic than the surrounding neighborhood streets. On the balance of those two criteria, I'd consider it tertiary.

Side note, I'd also consider Murray Blvd in this area as a pretty clear secondary road, as it provides an important N/S connection in this area that generally lacks good N/S routes and is more important than all the surrounding tertiary roads. I know it used to be tertiary but it looks like someone downgraded it recently (including to unclassified north of 4500 for some reason; a classification that doesn't make any sense at all given the road's form and function).

Mostly because it's one of those rural roads that actually leads somewhere of note. And my view is in that, in the most rural areas, most roads that are drivable by any vehicle and actually lead to some significant points of interest (e.g. a popular trailhead or reservoir access) should often be tertiary. That's in contrast to roads that need higher clearance or roads that just lead to a farm or a few houses or the like, or roads that are not drivable in a low-clearance 2wd sedan, which I would definitely leave as unclassified or residential depending on use. To me this makes sense to indicate which roads people are actually slightly important to the general public rather than just roads that nobody would have a reason to take.

But I agree with you that this one is borderline, since it's certain rural but not quite the middle of nowhere like many other similar roads in Utah. If someone were to change it to unclassified then I wouldn't complain.

This was a while ago but I'm pretty sure it was a typo :)

I'm going off a combo of several sources: including the USFS interactive map (https://www.fs.usda.gov/ivm/) and aerial imagery.

Generally if a road shows up on the interactive USFS map then it's a public road. But on that map there's a few interesting tings to note. Areas in the darkest green are wilderness areas. Areas in the slightly lighter green are non-wilderness USFS-owned lands, and generally (with a few exceptions) all roads there are public. Areas in the even lighter yellowish-green shade are NOT necessarily public lands, and can't generally be evaluated based on the USFS maps alone.

Most of this area falls into the third category, meaning that other sources of info like imagery and local knowledge are needed to determine if these roads are accessible. And the roads I marked as private I found were clearly marked as no trespassing or clearly gated.

Note that I've downgraded the portion of I-70 Business east of US 50 from trunk to primary. The portion to the west forms the most important access to Montrose from the west. But the portion to the east does not perform this function; the route from Denver to Montrose instead passes through Gunnison via US 285 and US 50 (right now there's construction blocking this route just east of Montrose, but when there is no construction it's the fastest and best route).