[Talk-us] Proposed mechanical edits to harmonize county road relation network=* values nationwide

[Clay Smalley]

My fellow Americans,

We have a lot of counties, a lot of county roads, and a lot of county road
shields. Historically, these tagging schemes developed state-by-state
without much coordination, so it makes sense that they've diverged. But
consistency is helpful not only when writing software to support these
tagging schemes, but also when documenting guidelines to apply to unmapped
counties. While I was writing wiki documentation on route=road relations in
a few states, I came across some inconsistencies between states that I
thought deserved some attention:

1. Counties' names may have spaces. Currently, this is inconsistently
reflected in tagging, with some states using spaces (network="US:WI:Fond du
Lac") and others using underscores (network=US:OK:Roger_Mills).

2. Counties' names may have abbreviations, usually for "Saint". This is
also inconsistent in tagging, with some states retaining the abbreviation
(network="US:FL:CR:St. Lucie") and others expanding it
(network="US:NY:Saint Lawrence").

As the value of network=* is a standard developed by the OSM community,
rather than a reflection of text one would see on-the-ground, I believe the
optimal tagging scheme should prioritize convenience of software support.
To this end, treating abbreviations and spaces consistently makes a huge
difference when writing software to support potentially thousands of
counties.

I would like to propose editing all route=road relations with the following
values of network=* to change spaces to underscores and expand
abbreviations:

US:FL:CR:Indian River
US:FL:CR:Palm Beach
US:FL:CR:Santa Rosa
US:FL:CR:St. Johns
US:FL:CR:St. Lucie
US:IA:Buena Vista
US:IA:Des Moines
US:IA:Van Buren
US:MN:Big Stone
US:MN:Blue Earth
US:MN:Crow Wing
US:MN:Lac qui parle
US:MN:Lake of the Woods
US:MN:Le Sueur
US:MN:Mille Lacs
US:MN:Yellow Medicine
US:NJ:Cape May
US:NM:CR:Dona Ana
US:NM:CR:San Juan:CM
US:NM:CR:San Juan:NCM
US:NM:CR:Santa Fe
US:NY:Saint Lawrence
US:TX:San Patricio
US:TX:Van Zandt
US:WI:Eau Claire
US:WI:Fond du Lac
US:WI:Green Lake
US:WI:La Crosse
US:WI:Saint Croix

Of course, an update in tagging would be followed by an update in
documentation.

Worth a mention is Ohio, with a very well-structured scheme of network=*
values. All counties in Ohio are referred to by their ODOT 3-letter code (a
reasonable exception due to Ohio's unique condition of having township
routes), and townships are all consistently referred to with underscores
and expanded abbreviations where applicable. So a signed route belonging to
St. Clair Township, Columbiana County, OH is tagged with
network="US:OH:COL:Saint_Clair".

I'd like to hear y'all's thoughts before going through with this edit.

-Clay
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