[Tagging] Route Relations and Special (Bannered) Routes

[Richard Weait]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Phil! Gold <phil_g at pobox.com> wrote:
> 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
>
> --
> ...computer contrarian of the first order... / http://aperiodic.net/phil/
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> Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides.  That means I *must* be right.
> :-)
>                       -- Larry Wall
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>
>  * 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

adding a tag for banner=Alternate/Business/Truck is my least-favourite
option of those above.

increasing specificity on the network tag like network=US:US:Alt
follows the original intent of the network tag.  It also offers the
least surprise to naive consumers of the data.