[Talk-us] US Route Tagging With Relations

[Chris Lawrence]

I have put up a short table with the proposed tagging scheme in the
OSM wiki.  I made a few minor changes from Zeke's practice and Alan's
suggestions:

- ref is reserved for backward compatibility and should follow
Key:ref's semantics.  "number" is used for the bare route identifier
(e.g. US 7 -> number=7; I-35W -> number=35W) as in Alan's suggestion.
- I changed "directional" to "direction" and permit abbreviation to a
single letter (N/S/E/W) and oddballs if spelled out - this allows
things like INNER, OUTER which are used in several places; QEW in
Ontario is "tabbed" with places rather than directions.  (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_Way#Name_and_signage)
- Less prominent vanity/honorary names probably should be tabbed as
_name variants and added to the Key:name page; the proposal allows any
tags listed under Key:name as part of the scheme.  More prominent
names (e.g. Hollywood Freeway, Van Wyck Expressway) should just be
tagged as name.
- I added a "symbol" key that includes a URL for a graphical
representation of the route marker.  This should be useful for named
routes like the Ohio Turnpike
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/OhioTurnpike.svg)
, the Kentucky parkway system, or the Sam Houston Tollway
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Samhoustontollway.png),
as well as more generic routes.

Here's the link:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging#Tagging_with_relations_.28proposal.29


Chris