[OSM-talk] labels for road names and route designations

[Colin Mackay]

Hi All,

I'm taking my first few tentative steps with this project and I hope to get
a GPS soon. However, I have some suggestions, so I hope this isn't something
that has been discussed before and I've just missed where the information
is. Anyway here goes:

I think some of this may be applicable to the Cycle Network Project also,
but I'm putting it here as it is more general.

I've been adding attributes (labels) to some of the road network in
Scotland. I've come across something that I couldn't find an answer for, and
I've see examples in the data that, to me, just look wrong. Here is the
situation: The A90 runs, more-or-less, from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. At some
point it crosses the Firth of Forth. While the A90 is in Edinburgh, it is
known for the most part as Queensferry Road. Over the Firth of Forth it is
known as the Forth Road Bridge. And I'm sure that in other sections it is
know be a more common local name.

In some countries, like the USA, the situation is more interesting as roads
seem to pick up many names and route numbers. Across the EU there is a
pan-EU numbering system that seems to be intermittently displayed (certainly
in the UK it isn't displayed, although some major routes do have an EU route
designation)

At the moment I've seen an example where a link has a name of "Axxxx Great
Kingsway" (or some such thing). I would like to suggest that this would be
better split out in to separate attributes (labels?). e.g.
    name1 = Queensferry Road
    route1 = A90
 or
    route1=M9
    route2=M876
(Apparently the UK's only multiplexed motorway)
The reason I'm using route1, name1, route2, name2, etc. is because from my
perspective at the moment the database schema is very flexible and
apparently not normalised in the slightest. I'd like the postfix numbers on
the column/field/label identifier so that if the data was ever extracted and
normalised it would make the job easier.

Regards,
Colin.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20060227/45e856be/attachment.html>