[Talk-us] State ref tags on ways

[Toby Murray]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 5:33 PM, Peter Davies <peter.davies at crc-corp.com>wrote:
>
>
> I have no idea why the convention of leaving out half the ref in the
> relation has been adopted. Just writing "5" instead of "I 5" is in my view
> pointlessly inconsistent.  Most states have an "SH 5".  Why create
> relations that are fundamentally confusing because of laziness?  Can anyone
> tell me a reason why ref contains a different value at the way and relation
> levels?  PLEASE state writing refs properly in relations, too.  Properly in
> this sense means uniquely. "I 5" not "5".
>

For relations, the state is indicated by the network tag. So Kansas highway
177 would have network=US:KS and ref=177. This seems like a pretty good way
of normalizing the data. This is what the current shield rendering code
uses. The only reason the ref tag on ways includes the state abbreviation
is that a way may be a member of multiple networks.

Then there are bannered routes. I don't remember off the top of my head how
those are tagged...

Speaking of which, some people here may not be aware that we are running a
functioning shield rendering map on the OSM-US server which uses route
relations. You can view it with a very basic UI here:

http://openstreetmap.us/~toby/shields.html

Toby
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