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

[Daniel @jfd553]

I agree with Kevin and John. These prefixes are not "on the signs" and I don't see what that would really add for Canadian OSM users. But thank you for bringing it for discussion.

Daniel
Sent from Galaxy S7

________________________________
From: John Whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 4, 2021 8:58:29 AM
To: Jherome Miguel <jheromemiguel at gmail.com>
Cc: talk-ca at openstreetmap.org <talk-ca at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] Route reference tagging: time for change?

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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