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

[Kevin Kenny]

Proper rendering for North American highways is coming - and it will have
to be driven off route relations, rather than just the 'ref' tag on ways.
Weird abbreviations in the 'ref' tag are just too hard to parse, and route
concurrencies are just too frequent.  There's one proof of concept that you
can see at
https://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test4.html?la=43.6192&lo=-79.7820&z=11

The data aren't yet all that well developed in Canada, but you can see that
there are a fair number of route relations in the area that includes
Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener/Waterloo, and the Niagara Frontier.  You can
see here that there are markers for county roads that show the trapezoids
with their distinctive shapes and colours, the King's Highway marker for
provincial primary roads, and the distinctive banner of the Queen Elizabeth
Way.  You can also see that a change to the 'network' in the route relation
allows the toll roads around Oshawa to get their distinctive blue shields.
(The gaffe in the '407 Toll' shield is fixable with a Small Matter of
Programming).

On the same map in the vicinity of Montréal you can see Québec primary and
secondary highways,  abd bear Fredericton you can see a selection of New
Brunswick ones.  (Unfortunately, the map I'm directing you to was designed
as a map of the US, and its non-OSM data sources peter out beyond our
borders, so the rendering starts to fall apart in Canada. You can at least
see, though, that distinctive markers appear.

On the proof-of-concept map, you'll see some ugly OSM-style highway
shields.  These contain the 'ref' for either a route relation belonging to
an unnknown network, or else the 'ref' for a way that is not a member of a
route relation.  I intentionally make no effort to deduce their networks or
prettify them.

In short: the 'ref' on a way doesn't convey a lot of useful information to
renderers that are any more soplhisticated than what we already have, so
arguing about what particular abbreviations to include is not likely to
help a fancier rendering.  Route relations are the way to go moving forward.





On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 7:07 PM Jherome Miguel <jheromemiguel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Again, anyone in favour of dropping “PTH” and “PR” on Manitoba provincial
> highways?
>
> On Sun, Jul 4, 2021 at 12:15 PM Jherome Miguel <jheromemiguel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Sorry, should have pressed “Reply All”. Forwarding to list.
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> From: Jherome Miguel <jheromemiguel at gmail.com>
>> Date: Sun, Jul 4, 2021 at 12:14 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] Route reference tagging: time for change?
>> To: Andrew Deng <andrewdeng93 at yahoo.ca>
>>
>>
>> We’ll, I don’t know well why our neighbours south of the border add state
>> abbreviations to state highway/road numbers, but I think this is an
>> evolution from using ref= values based on those used by state departments
>> of transportation for inventory purposes as well as signs. I can remember
>> seeing ref= with SR (State Route) and SH (State Highway) around 2015 to
>> 2016 before the OSM US community moved towards using values prefixed with
>> state postal abbreviations since SR and SH are too common across many
>> states, though there are notable exceptions to the guideline like M-XXX for
>> Michigan state highways (Kansas state highways uses similar values as well,
>> being K-XXX, as found on their signs with a yellow sunflower outline, but
>> they seem to have been mostly replaced by KS XXX) as well as various
>> subtypes of state highways in Texas (Loop Roads, Beltway 8, Spur Roads,
>> NASA Road 1, Farm to Market Roads, Recreational Roads and Ranch to Market
>> Roads. Texas state highways usually use TX XXX). On US Routes, US is mostly
>> not found in signs for most of the states except California, but I would
>> assume it’s used nationwidr for consistency across states as well as for
>> disambiguation. On the Interstates, it’s obvious why there’s the “I”before
>> the number: it’s a shorthand for Interstate which can be seen on signs
>> though it’s small print when viewed from a distance.
>>
>> Back on the main topic, considering many argue against adding province or
>> territory postal abbreviations, I think we can keep on using bare numbers
>> for provincial/territorial highways, but add RR/CR/MR for Ontario municipal
>> roads for disambiguation. I agree, as Andrew has said, there’s some former
>> provincial highways that are now officially “ABC County/Regional/Municipal
>> Road XXX” but still called “[King’s] Highway X”. This change would also
>> benefit some municipal roads that are tagged primary, usually those that
>> are recently “downloaded” from provincial maintenance, since some renderers
>> still show them as using provincial highway shields even they’re long gone
>> from MTO’s maintenance and the signs changed (and some are renumbered such
>> as former Highway 7 through Peel, which is now RR 107, the 10 being added
>> to distinguish it from RR 7 that existed when Highway 7 is still under MTO
>> maintenance).
>>
>> Again, on Manitoba ref= tagging, anyone in favour for or against getting
>> rid of PTH and PR?
>>
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-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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