I think the 45 mph speed limit and the tight exits and entry from North Queen Street are suggestive that this isn't really a motorway. If you look through the history, this stretch has gone back and forth quite a bit, but I trust Joseph RP's judgement since he's done a lot of this in the area, and it looks like he ultimately settled on highway=trunk. You can check out the tagging guidance for Virginia here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Virginia/Highway_classification#Motorway.