[Talk-us] USBRS WikiProject enjoys success for Autumn 2015 round

[stevea]

OSM's USBRS WikiProject has just had its most successful "round" (of 
AASHTO ballots, just approved) yet:  eight United States Bicycle 
Routes were just AASHTO approved.  This happens twice a year, we just 
had the Autumn 2015 vote.

This WikiProject owes recent and serious gratitude to the following 
individuals:

* Andrew Guertin for entering a significant chunk of USBR 7 in 
Vermont (from Canada to Burlington),
* Mike Nice for entering USBR 21 in Georgia and seeds/stubs for 
proposed USBRs 321 and 521,
* Joe Kallo for entering USBR 36 in Indiana,
* Minh Nguyen for entering USBR 50A in Ohio, and for his co-founding 
of this project and making the beautiful SVG shields for the route 
signs,
* Ethan Nelson for entering USBR 76 in Kansas -- and for finding 
errors from KDOT which made the full round trip from KDOT to AASHTO 
to Ethan to OSM to AASHTO to approval to display in OSM, and 
especially
* Greg Morgan for entering USBR 90 in Arizona (a HERCULEAN effort!) 
and acting as much as "co-pilot" on this project as anybody has yet 
done so far.

I am deeply appreciative to the wonderful, cooperative, 
consensus-based, roll-up-our-sleeves-and-do-it approach that 
everybody who contributed has offered this round.  It is a testament 
to the spirit of OSM that "we can do this," and indeed, except for a 
bit of distance in Vermont, a couple of gaps in Indiana, and two 
small ambiguities around Tucson, we are essentially done for this 
round.  We might be a bit "chartreuse" (mostly green but a bit of 
yellow) in our wiki status for Approved routes, but I'll take that! 
Congratulations!

In brief, semi-annually (in Spring and Autumn), state DOTs provide 
their states' proposals to AASHTO as a "ballot" from the People of 
that state (through the DOT) for a national bicycle route in that 
state to become part of the USBRS network.  In this OSM project, we 
enter data of the thousands of kilometers of route while the ballot 
works its way through AASHTO as a proposal (though it has been 
technically approved by the People of the state, the AASHTO 
ballot/approval process "officializes" the route into the national 
USBRS network).  Finally, when AASHTO approves each state DOT ballot 
for a USBR, (as happened last week), if/as the route has been entered 
into OSM (and this time, all were, nearly every mile), we simply 
delete the "state=proposed" tag, and (if necessary) incorporate the 
route into super-relations so they stitch together the USBRS across 
the nation.

This is a wonderful collaboration, and I am delighted to report on 
the positive progress we have enjoyed.

Thanks again to the great volunteers and dedicated spirit in this OSM project,

SteveA
USBRS WikiProject coordinator
California