[Talk-ca] Route reference tagging: time for change?

[John Whelan]

An electronic search for 401 will probably not find ON401.

End users tend to like reliability.  They tend to use notes or 
documentation on how to do things.  If you make the changes then it 
takes about a year for all the databases to get updated.  For example 
OSMAND takes a copy every month or so, many users don't update their off 
line copies very often so for a period of time the documentation has to 
cater to two different ways of tagging to avoid confusion.

Then you get to the You-tube instructions that just mention use OSM and 
look for 401.  Try getting a four year old you-tube updated and that is 
an example of documentation.  It took more than twenty years to get one 
of my aunts to change the address she used when sending me a Christmas 
card.  Each year Canada Post would tag it incorrectly addressed.  The 
house hadn't moved just Canada Post had changed the official address for 
it ten years after it was built but getting her to change was a major 
effort.

I think Stats Canada thinks that 25% of the population is functionally 
illiterate, it is higher in some provinces.  Functionally illiterate 
people are usually better with numbers than a mixture.

Numbers are normally language agnostic.  Once you start adding letters 
you add complexity.

My smartphone doesn't correct numbers but put a letter in there and life 
gets interesting.  Do an electronic search for something and it will 
capitalise the first letter and put the rest in lower case and that's 
before it starts to substitute what it thinks I should have typed.

Not all provinces have treaties for land with the natives.  For example 
putting BC on a highway that runs across native land might be be a touch 
insensitive at the moment.

I'm not sure what the advantages would be and whether it would be worth 
the costs involved in making a change.

Cheerio John

Jherome Miguel wrote on 7/4/2021 2:49 AM:
> I’ve been considering a major change to the way we tag highway ref= 
> values, trying to follow the lead with our neighbours stateside.
> Currently practice has been to use bare route numbers except in 
> Manitoba, where the number is preceded by PTH, PR or Route depending 
> on type of route; for the data user’s end, the rendered shield is 
> generally dependent on the tagged classification of the road (mostly 
> tied to the road’s official classification by the provincial or 
> territorial transportation ministry), the province or territory, and 
> the network tag in the route’s relation.
>
> The proposal for route numbers is, by type of road:
> - For provincial and territorial highways, add province/territory 
> postal abbreviation before number (e.g. AB 2 for Alberta Highway 2, ON 
> 401 for Ontario Highway 401, BC 5 for BC Highway 5, NS 101 for Nova 
> Scotia Highway 5), except perhaps Manitoba provincial highways (can 
> keep ref=* with PTH for provincial trunk highways including the 
> Trans-Canada and the Yellowhead, and PR for provincial roads). This 
> includes routes with special shields different from provincial or 
> territorial towns standard designs (e.g. the TransCan, BC Highway 5 as 
> the South Yellowhead, the Mackenzie Highway). The QEW will remain as 
> it is. For highways forming the TransCan, it can be tagged as a second 
> ref= value, as TCH.
> - For Ontario regional and county roads, add CR or RR before number 
> depending on the type of municipality the road is in.
> - For Toronto expressways (the Gardiner, the Allen, the DVP), there 
> will be no changes.
> - For Winnipeg city routes, there will be no changes.
>
> Any further ideas? Comments?
>
>
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