[OSM-talk] Patch to render names from routes and custom highway shields on a per country basis

[Stephen Hope]

2009/9/22 Richard Weait <richard at weait.com>:
> Now everything I know about Australian highways I learned from Mel
> Gibson in _The Road Warrior_ so I have much to learn.  What is the
> shield landscape like in Australia?
>

Queensland is in the (slow) process of changing to alphanumeric
designations, starting with the main highways. It also has a lot of
local (state) routes.  The main problem with them, is that many of the
numbers are used twice.  They only use two digit numbers, and they
have more than a hundred local routes, as the state is enormous -
bigger then Alaska, or about 3/4 of the area of Western Europe.

Pretty much every secondary (or better) road in the SE Metropolitan
area is a State route, and a lot of these numbers are reused on rural
roads in other parts of the state. It's generally not too much of a
problem, but something to be aware of. These numbers would be B roads
in the new alphanumeric system (I think), but I've never seen a Bnn
sign in Qld, the signs are just a blue shield with the number. They've
pretty much changed all the A and M roads to the new designations, but
I'm not sure if they're going to keep working down the list to the
lower roads or not.

Stephen