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

[Clay Smalley]

There are three schemes in use for county routes, as follows:

1. US:<state>:CR
2. US:<state>:CR:<county>
3. US:<state>:<county>

The first one is used in California, Michigan and New Jersey for county
roads with state-coordinated numbers. For example, the State of New Jersey
assigns route numbers 500-599 to certain county-maintained thoroughfares
that link population centers in separate counties. Even in the one county
(Bergen) with nonstandard shields for routes not part of the 500 series,
state-coordinated routes are still posted with standard shields, so this
distinction is necessary.

The second is used in Florida and New Mexico. I'm not sure what the
reasoning is behind the CR infix.

The third is used in every other state with county roads, including the
aforementioned Michigan and New Jersey. Having distinct values for each
county is useful in states like Ohio and Texas, where counties have a lot
of leeway to signpost routes however they want. But even in other states
like Illinois where county roads are all posted with a standard blue
pentagon shield, the constituent counties have some wildly different
numbering systems, which shouldn't all be conflated into a single network=*
value just because of the matching shields.

Note that the recently retagged US:WV:County is not represented here, as it
is actually a state road system similar to Virginia's secondary roads or
Missouri's supplemental routes, where the state maintains the roads and
assigns numbers.

My usual criteria for whether two routes should distinct network=* values
are:
* Are the routes posted with identical, or very similar, shields?
* Are the route numbers assigned by the same government entity?
If the answer is 'no' to either of those, they should not have the same
network=* value. And if both answers are 'yes', the network=* values should
match. Of course, there are exceptions to this sort of rule (like the
Trans-Canada Highway, which is tagged with one network value despite route
numbers being assigned by the constituent provinces).

On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 9:39 AM Brian M. Sperlongano <zelonewolf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think the nature of the proposed edits (expanding abbreviations and
> harmonizing county name formats) is fine.  I'm ambivalent about whether
> space or underscore is better as long as we can stick with one or the other.
>
> One thing I would like to see spelled out is when we tag county routes
> individually and when we tag them with a state-wide scheme.  For example,
> the US interstate system repeats 3-digit route numbers across the country
> but we still maintain one national network value (US:I), despite state
> names often appearing on the interstate shields (varies from state to
> state).  Likewise, in some states, route numbers are repeated in different
> counties yet share a common shield and symbology statewide, perhaps with
> the county name written on the standard shield.  Whatever the "rule" is for
> what makes a route network distinct from another network, I think it's
> worthwhile to examine whether any of these county route systems are
> consistent with how that distinction is applied to county route systems in
> other states, and with national routes such as the Interstate system.
>
> On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 7:58 AM Clay Smalley <claysmalley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>> _______________________________________________
>> Talk-us mailing list
>> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20220502/63e673fb/attachment-0001.htm>