[Tagging] Clarification on the role link in route relations

[Kevin Kenny]

On Sat, Jan 8, 2022 at 4:07 PM Minh Nguyen <minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us>
wrote:

> The wiki page for route relations lists an optional role "link" for
> highway=*_link ways leading to and from the route. [1] Under what
> circumstances should this role be used? Should we deprecate it?
> The "link" role was originally documented in 2009. [2] At the same time,
> the highway=motorway_link documentation was edited to state that all
> link roads should be members of route relations as "link" members. [3] I
> can't find any discussion about the changes. The requirement to add link
> roads to route relations was removed the following year [4], but the
> role remained documented on the route relation page.
>

On Slack, it came up that there are only a few small regions of the US
where route relations have members with the 'link' role, and one of those
was the Capital Region surrounding Albany, New York. I was identified as
the perpetrator.

I plead guilty to having started on my journey of creating route relations
by a careful reading of the Wiki page describing them.

If the "link" role doesn't mean what it says on the tin, then I haven't
that much use for it, although I need to be informed about what to do about
slipways that are signed with a route number, but which are joining the
route, rather than members of the mainline. I have in mind slipways at
surface intersections, rather than motorway link roads, for which proper
"destination" tagging at the interchange will probably be a better
solution. I don't do all that much motorway mapping in any case, except to
repair broken route relations.
-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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