[Tagging] road names and refs

[Kevin Kenny]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 9:51 AM Jarek Piórkowski <jarek at piorkowski.ca> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 30 Jan 2020 at 09:38, Rob Savoye <rob at senecass.com> wrote:
> > On 1/30/20 2:08 AM, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> > > "County Road 12" is a ref. It is not a name. People often refer to roads by
> > > their ref. That's fine. I will say "I'm taking the A3400 to Stratford"
> >
> >   I'm wondering if "CR 12" or "County Road 12" (the abbreviation
> > expanded) was the proper value for a ref. If the abbreviation is fine
> > for the ref, should it then have a name that is expanded ? The wiki
> > isn't clear.
>
> One solution I've seen advanced is that the ref in that case is just
> 12. But that rather raises more new questions than it answers, because
> while no one says "I'm going to take the Highways England A3400" or
> "the British A3400", people do say "I'm going to take County Road
> 12"...

What I do:

(1) The `name=*` field gets the road's actual name. If the road's only
name is 'County Route 12' (New York consistently uses 'Route' rather
than 'Road' for these), to the extent that `addr:street=*` will show
that for the name, then `name=*` gets that name. (Yes I know that
there are mappers who would prefer `noname=yes` in that situation, but
address validation has an easier time with the way I do it.)

(2) The `ref=*` gets 'CR 12'.  This ref has to be short because that's
what OSM-Carto will put in the box that labels the route. This `ref=*`
is, in my mind, tagging for the renderer. (In the acceptable sense:
it's telling the truth; but the truth that will render lacks full
detail. It's lying to the renderer that's bad practice.) The more
complete information has to go elsewhere, so read on.

(3) In the US, there are so many coincidences among numbered routes
that they're hard to work with unless you use `route=road` relations.
Moreover, there are a number of cases where one jurisdiction's route
crosses over into another jurisdiction's territory, but the owning
juristiction still maintains and numbers it. There are New York State
highways with portions in at least Connecticut, New Jersey and
Pennsylvania. Only a route relation can identify the state on NY 120A
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/108702747 where it's a New York
State highway on Connecticut soil.
(Note that its postal address is also Purchase, New York, and not
Fairfield, Connecticut, since its mail is delivered from the other
side of the state line. Confusion abounds.)

For a county route, the relation will be tagged:

type=route
route=road
network=US:NY:Saratoga
ref=12

which also identifies what county labeled the route, letting a more
sophisticated renderer add pictorial shields.

Around here, on roads where the reference is the name, people usually
will leave out the common noun 'highway', 'route', 'road' on the
larger highways, referring to "Interstate 890", "US 9", "New York 7".
On the county roads, their speech will be loose: if a driver were to
give directions on "Route 74", "Schenectady County 74", or "County
Route 74", none of those would raise eyebrows.