[talk-au] Should a "trail" route relation be one-way?

[Ian Steer]

> From: Ewen Hill <ewen.hill at gmail.com>
> Sent: Saturday, 10 September 2022 9:35 AM
> To: Ian Steer <iansteer at iinet.net.au>
> Subject: Re: [talk-au] Should a "trail" route relation be one-way?
> 
>    I have been thinking of this with the new Collie township spur and the
> other oddities and especially the huts that scatter the route which apart from
> one amazing hut that is smack bang in the middle of the trail, are normally
> just off the trail on short spurs. 
> 
>   Where it started with two relationships of MB-Main and MB-Alternative, I
> believe a master MB would be preferable containing all the huts, spurs,
> winter/summer variations and the main route. Where there is a spur like
> Collie (~16km?), an additional MB-Collie-Spur might be worthwhile.
> 
> Having a single master would allow users to easily extract the entire route
> and huts in one go and prepare them for their garmin and whatever GIS
> software they use.It would also give councils, emergency services, tourism
> operators etc. easy access to all of the relevant data.  I don't see the need to
> maintain any other spur relationships unless the spur is ~> 2km as it's
> probably overkill and makes it more complex to maintain.
> 

What would people think about a structure that had a Munda Biddi master relation, containing only 3 sub-relations:
1.  the existing relation containing the main route (including both north & south-bound one-way sections, plus the winter/summer routes)
2.  a new "Munda Biddi Collie Spur" relation
3.  the existing Munda Biddi Alternate relation (that is presently a sub-relation of the relation containing the main route) containing all the hut spurs, huts etc


I note that the hut spurs could perhaps be left in the main relation and tagged with an "excursion" role (rather than dragged-out into a separate relation as they are now).
What are the pros and cons of leaving them in the main route and using the excursion role?

I suppose one disadvantage would be that sorting the route would show discontinuities ?

Ian