[Tagging] Route Relations and Special (Bannered) Routes

Phil! Gold phil_g at pobox.com
Sun Mar 11 15:16:47 GMT 2012


I'd like to solicit some thoughts on the tagging for special routes
(commonly known as bannered routes)[0].  In route relations, it's
customary to separate the network and the reference number.  How do or
should special routes fit into that?

I'm torn between three views and I'm not sure which of them is the best
fit for the way people think about special routes in a general sense.

Let's consider one of US Route 1's alternate routes[1].  We can
think of it as:

 * An independent route within the US Highway system whose reference
   number happens to be alphanumeric.
   network=US:US
   ref=1 Alternate  (but people might use ref=1 Alt, because that's what's
                     on some of the signs)

 * A route within the subset of the US Highway system consisting of
   alternate routes:
   network=US:US:Alternate
   ref=1

 * A route related to the main US Route 1, but with an additional tag
   indicating that it's a bannered offshoot:
   network=US:US
   ref=1
   banner=Alternate

I'm partial to the idea of separating the banner from the reference
number, but I'm not sure how any of these ideas mesh with the
understandings of people with more experience with road networks than I
have.

tagging@ is included because I'm not sure how global a practice this sort
of thing is, even though it's quite common in the US.

  [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_route
  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannered_routes_of_U.S._Route_1#Alternate_routes

-- 
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