[Talk-us] State highway refs (was Re: New I.D Feature)

[Minh Nguyen]

On 2014-11-29 19:31, Dave Mansfield wrote:
>  From the Wiki
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging
>
> “The two letter abbreviation for the state per the United States Postal
> Service's state abbreviation list
> <https://www.usps.com/send/official-abbreviations.htm>, another
> abbreviation used by the state (such as SR for State Road), or no
> prefix. Different states may have different standards for which to use,
> and there is no current inter-state standard.”
>
> I take the “Different states may have different standards for which to
> use” to mean that not all states use the two letter abbreviation and in
> states that don’t we should use that states standard for example
> Michigan uses M. The highway behind my house is M-15 and singed that way
> so I would think it should be tagged that way. Am I reading the Wiki wrong?

Back in September, I collected some statistics on states that use 
something other than the state abbreviation in way refs:

<https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2014-September/013604.html>

tl;dr: 97% of Michigan's state routes are currently tagged with M or M-, 
and a couple other states are also contrarian in this regard.

On 2014-11-29 19:40, Paul Johnson wrote:
 > I'm going to say that the wiki is presently wrong compared to consensus
 > previously arrived at on the tagging list regarding this issue the last
 > 971151183 times that this has come up, largely as a result of previous
 > efforts by NE2 to game the renderer...

I think NE2's ref efforts have largely been undone in states where 
mappers disagreed. (I undid several of his edits where he tried to 
reduce refs to parenthesized numbers.) But in the case of Ohio, we were 
already using "SR" and have continued to use it. (Ohio's shields have no 
lettering on them, but blade signs, variable message boards, etc. do say 
"SR".) Next door in Indiana, I think "IN" has pretty much taken over.

In general, if you'd like to make systematic changes to data that seems 
intentional, it's a good idea to reach out to the mappers who entered 
it. And if you decide to go ahead with any ref editing, be sure to add 
any missing relations and relation roles.

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us