[Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary & Unclassifed Roads in Highland

[Bogus Zaba]

On 03/17/2013 03:46 PM, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> SK53 wrote:
>> I'd be interested in what others think (these council based refs do
>> appear elsewhere in the country: I can't recall ever seeing one on
>> a road sign).
> I agree very, very strongly that unsignposted C-road numbers (or U, or D, or
> E, or whatever) should not be placed in the ref tag. It breaks people's
> expectations of OSM data (and it's not a harmless breakage - any
> turn-by-turn router which prefers refs over names will give out unfollowable
> directions).
>
>
+1 for this.

Setting out for Chester this morning, I look up the OSM map to see which 
way to go around the ring road. Zoom in to the area around the station. 
What are these  strange codes appearing randomly on or near some roads? 
No way of knowing by just looking at the map or its key. Get the 
relevant area in JOSM. Oh, thanks, somebody thinks that adding tags like 
"ref=UX60" and "ref=UX505" is going to help me find my way around. Such 
tagging can only confuse, not assist an end-user. Knowing how the ref 
tag is used by major renderers, it seems to me to be simply perverse to 
add these tags to unclassified roads.

I know that we should not "tag for the renderer", but in cases where we 
know exactly what the renderer will be doing and that this particular 
outcome will be unhelpful to the end-user, let's use some common sense.

By the way, in response to those who are saying that these are 
authoritative identifiers, which should take their place in our 
database, here's what the Dept of Transport says in its guidance to 
Local Authorities:
"/Some authorities choose to number their classified unnumbered roads, 
and can refer to them as C roads. This has no national standing, but we 
recognise that an authority may put in place measures to help identify a 
road. In the absence of a standardised national system of numbering, we 
advise that any local numbering is not displayed on signs/." [1]

Not only do you not find these identifiers in the field, LAs are 
actively discouraged from showing them on signs. So perhaps if somebody 
really wants to add these IDs to the database, an appropriate tag would 
be "local:ref=UX60"?

[1] Guidance on Road Classification and the Primary Route Network. Dept 
for Transport. Jan 2012. 
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-road-classification-and-the-primary-route-network 


Bogus Zaba