[Talk-us] Scrubbing route relations
Minh Nguyen
mxn at 1ec5.org
Sun Oct 21 13:28:08 BST 2012
On 2012-10-20 4:00 PM, Michal Migurski wrote:
> - Normalizing network names for all county routes with the ":CR" infix
I'm not enthusiastic about sticking `:CR` in all the county route
relations. I favor `US:[state]:[county]`, at least for the relations in
Ohio, for the same reason we have `US:[state]` rather than
`US:SR:[state]`. It doesn't look like you touched any Ohio county
routes, but that's probably because you didn't realize that's what they
are. :-)
Ohio county route relations' `network`s conform to a simple pattern:
`US:OH:[ABC]`, where [ABC] is the county's three-letter, all-caps ODOT
code. Obviously, the codes aren't used as commonly as USPS state
abbreviations, but many counties use them on signage, and they're quite
handy for this purpose.
Having the extra `:CR` component might make sense in states like New
Jersey and California that have consistent, statewide county route
standards. But in Ohio, most counties that signpost their routes do it
in different ways, in violation of the state MUTCD. There are so many
variations that entire websites [1] are devoted to documenting them.
(And as you'd imagine, some townships have their own unique route
shields, too.)
You mentioned that using `:CR` makes it possible to "correctly
interpret" county routes without knowing the county names. I guess that
depends on what we expect the relations to be used for. To a developer
generating shields for display on a map, `:CR` would suggest
standardizing on, say, the blue and gold pentagonal shield, when in fact
that would be misleading in maybe three-quarters of the state. And I'd
say the shields are the /only/ interesting thing about Ohio county routes.
By the way, if anyone's interested in rendering these shields, I've
started a collection of SVG templates at Wikimedia Commons [2]. One
thing I learned while making these templates is that some counties
include the township name in their county route shields. Presumably, a
route that crosses township lines would have more than one shield
variant. Should we have subrelations with the township name in `modifier`?
[1] http://www.angelfire.com/oh5/countysigns/
[2]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ohio_county_route_shield_templates
--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at 1ec5.org>
Jabber: mxn at 1ec5.org; Blog: http://notes.1ec5.org/
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