[Talk-us] Questions about tagging local streets as US and state highways

[Leroy E Leonard]

We (mostly local OSMers with a few carpetbaggers) have been really
busy mapping our small town of Decatur, Georgia, and I wanted to step
back and ask how we're doing.

As a spot check for our work, as a learning opportunity for others,
and as a review of our documentation /standards, I'd like some
feedback on a single street, College Street in downtown Decatur, GA is
also part of US 278 and GA 10.

Here's College Street in OpenStreetMap:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=33.77115&lon=-84.29243&zoom=16&layers=B000FTF

Here's a image in Google's StreetView:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=33.770916,-84.293099&spn=0,359.98071&z=16&layer=c&cbll=33.770958,-84.29298&panoid=I0pLfm7r3ve3Pml3OBQouw&cbp=12,63.65,,0,-3.61

The relevant key/value pairs for the way are:
highway: primary
name: East College Ave
ref: US 278; 10
(We can talk about Tiger data another time)

The US 278 relation looks like:
network: US:US
ref: US 278
route: road
symbol: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/US_278.svg
type: route
wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_278

The GA 10 relation looks like:
network: US:GA
ref: 10
route: road
symbol: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Georgia_10.svg
type: route

Some specific questions:
1. Do we need the ref tag for the way when we have the two relations
with the same info?
2. Should the ref tag in the US 278 relation really be "US 278" or simply "278"?

Philosophical questions:
3. This road never renders with shields. Should it? Is it a problem of
tagging, rendering, or false expectations?
4. (Related to question 1) when we have duplicate information in ways
and relations, is there a reason to having it duplicated or should it
be moved to the relation?

Any other improvements or suggestions for this way and its relations?

 -- Lee