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

[Jarek Piórkowski]

On Sun, 4 Jul 2021 at 12:23, Andrew Deng via Talk-ca
<talk-ca at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
> I agree with the proposal. It makes it easier to identify which routes are provincially-owned, which are regional/county roads, and which ones are municipal. For example, with the current no-prefix tagging, one would have no idea that York Regional Road 7 in Markham becomes Ontario Highway 7 east of Reesor Road, and a person would have to look online to websites such as https://thekingshighway.ca/ in order to accurately determine where the provincial part of the highway starts.

Actually we have this data in OSM, in machine-readable `network` tags
in route relations. York's Highway 7 is
https://osm.org/relation/4426016 with network=CA:ON:York while the
provincial part is https://osm.org/relation/2203858 with
network=CA:ON:primary.

(Incidentally, the `network` tag also allows OSM users to distinguish
between municipal and provincial freeways, for example QEW as
CA:ON:primary https://osm.org/relation/102331 vs Gardiner as
CA:ON:Toronto:Expressway https://osm.org/relation/109578.)

It is true that this is not rendered on the default openstreetmap.org
map layer, but changing tags to get rendering on any one renderer is
generally discouraged in OSM. On the flip side, this `network` tag
actually contains more information than an "RR" in ref would have -
for example, a specialized renderer could show shields for York
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:York_Regional_Road_7.svg)
differently from shields for Niagara (network=CA:ON:Niagara resulting
in a shield like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Niagara_Regional_Road_20.svg)

> As for the prefix not being on the signs, US Route signs also do not have US- prefix on their shields, nor do many state route shields either. So I don't understand the argument there.

There is a counter argument that perhaps routes in the USA shouldn't
have prefixes either - since they're not signed, and, you know, for
consistency with Canada ;)

> To answer the one about Hamilton: I know that Sudbury refers to theirs as "Municipal Road X", so perhaps that would be the same with Hamilton?

Actually most numbered routes in Hamilton follow named roads (like
King Street, Main Street), and where they don't, the road is often
still named like simply "Highway 8". For an example, check out route
65 near their southern border https://osm.org/relation/4137034 (the
history of that relation might also be interesting for those wanting
to find an abbreviation for Hamilton roads, but you'll probably want
to find a verifiable source).

As another example, Oxford County in Ontario is legally a regional
municipality, should their roads be prefixed CR or RR? Who can verify
all of these?

--Jarek