Highway colors

[HarelM]

We talked about it in the past but I'm not sure I remember what was the outcome/agreement on this.
The problem statement is that while the current colors for the roads is good and aligns with Israel's road network, it's might not be the right solution to the entire world.
As a hack to allow using both new color and the old color (Assuming we decide to change these colors) I suggested to create a overlay that shows the highway with the Israeli colors. It might be a hack, but I think it might be able to mitigate the problem.
It's worth mentioning that Google and Waze do not show these colors on their maps (besides the shields).

[zstadler]

Because of bridges and tunnels there are dozens of highway-related layers in the style. It is also important that names and icons are placed on top of the highways.
This significantly complicates an overlay-based solution.

[zstadler]

Looking at different styles on osm.org, most of them assign different colors to roads with different importance. I could not find any patterns in the color schemes. The reader can infer the importance of each color from the map appearance. It now seems that the choice of the current colors is as good as any of the color choices made for other ma designs.

A few map styles color all roads in gray, as done in mapeak-bike, and differentiate by width.

[HarelM]

That's a fair point.
I think the only "difference" I can see is that the road colors in the other maps are less "dramatic" and a bit more "pale".
Having said that, changing that is definitely under the "nice-to-have" section and doesn't prevent the use or creates a problem for users outside Israel.
Thanks for looking into this!

[zstadler]

With a brighter hiking map #202, we could also consider changed in the tone of road colors.

[HarelM]

I think that's a good idea.