[talk-au] Princes Highway (Relation 538443)

[Steve Bennett]

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 9:26 AM, Ian Sergeant <inas66+osm at gmail.com> wrote:
> The RTA in NSW has an internal route that they call the Princes Highway -
> which is essentially the main road heading south along the coast (give or
> take).  They nominate this route because it is the one they maintain as a
> state govt road with state funding.  The only problem is, the the route they
> designate often doesn't follow the road named the Princes Highway, like the
> section from Bellambi to Fairy Meadow where the RTA route called the Princes
> Highway follows the Northern Distributor, rather than the Princes Highway.
> Confusing?

If there are two distinct Princes Highway routes, then having two
relations would be reasonable. Give them names to make it clear. If
there is a main route with alternative sections, that can be managed,
too. If an authority designates a route that doesn't use sections of
road called "Princes Highway", it's really not the end of the world.

> Other towns have a bypass route and through-town route - neither of which
> are called the Princes Highway.  Which to choose?

Work it out case by case.

> What I'm talking about here is a "route" relation.  I'm arguing that we
> don't need a named route relation called the Princes Highway.

But your argument consists of "I can't decide which roads should make
up the relation, so let's delete the relation".

> We should call the roads involved what they are called using the name tag on
> the roads.  We should use the appropriate numerical route designators as
> they apply for the route descriptors, either using the ref tag, or a route
> relation.  If people see the need to link the Princes Highway named sections
> as a common street using the appropriate relations for that purpose, then
> fine.
>
> Do you agree?

No. Ok, you don't like the uncertainty, I see that. You want perfect,
pristine, unambiguous mapping, or nothing at all. But relations are
good, they group stuff together meaningfully, and they are useful for
rendering.

> It seems the Princes Highway can mean different things to different people,
> and unlike the route and highway numbers, we don't have a fixed reference
> point.

Like I said, the world is messy and complicated, and we just have to
deal with that.

>
>> Route 1 is "Cairns to Darwin via coast", and was signposted thus in the
>> 60s.
>
> Yeah.  National Route 1 is groovy, man.

Princes Highway is part of route 1. See Wikipedia.

Steve