[Talk-us] US Route Tagging With Relations

[Chris Lawrence]

Certainly relations would seem to be the way to go with route marking;
we probably should put together something on the wiki that can be
worked on collaboratively, with Alan's proposal as a start.  There are
some areas to be fleshed out (primary & secondary state routes in
states like TN and MO; the seven or eight different classifications in
Texas) and I think there might be some useful additions (for example,
Wikimedia has SVG files for many highway markers that we could include
URLs for in the reference tags, including named routes that would be
difficult to make markers for programatically; then Mapnik etc could
just use those with a simplistic fallback), but this is definitely a
good place to start.

"Vanity names" (or honorary names) BTW can be fairly long, although
there is a question of how much value they have - in some areas (e.g.
So Cal, Chicago, NYC) they're what locals call the highways and are
fairly well-signed, but in others they're downright obscure.  And some
places it's a mix (in New Orleans, the Westbank, Earhart, and
Pontchartrain expressways are referred to by name, but I doubt anyone
even knows what name I-610 or I-310 have).


Chris