[Talk-us] REF tags for State Highways on ways

[Nathan Mills]

 On Fri, 8 Apr 2011 14:11:57 -0500, Kristian M Zoerhoff wrote:

>> IMO, the state's postal abbreviation followed by the route number
>> should be used. This makes them easily distinguished from US or
>
> But this is not always correct. In Michigan, for example, all state 
> highways
> are named M-nn, with M- being part of the road's actual name in many 
> places.
> It is never, ever, written MI-nn.

 Shouldn't the ref tag be an unambiguous reference to a given road in a 
 route network? Clearly, one should not put name=MI XX on a Michigan 
 state route (unless there is a road sign reading "MI XX"), but ref=MI XX 
 provides said unambiguous reference and can be easily translated into 
 the canonical name of the route. A name should go in the name tag, 
 anyway. Sometimes the name and ref are identical, sometimes they're not.

 Seems to me that the ref tag is much less useful when it's ambiguous.

 Yes, we all ought to be using relations, but there's a lot of state 
 routes that don't yet have relations.