[OSM-talk] US Highway 266

[Toby Murray]

Sorry, I have been letting this disagreement simmer for too long.
Since it was brought up on the mailing list, I will present my view of
the situation here as well. I am not even going to say who is on which
side of the argument. My goal is to just present facts and give my own
opinion at the end.

The basic disagreement and resulting edit war has been over what
should be in the name=* tag on the ways of a section of highway in
Tulsa, Oklahoma. There have been links to state legislature PDFs
thrown around but given that OSM primarily cares about what is on the
ground, here is what I have found.

To start off with, meet Creek Turnpike:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1250473

The section of Creek Turnpike that runs from US 64 east to Oklahoma
highway 351 (the section that hooks south around the "Broken Arrow"
label) has been given the (additional) name "Liberty Parkway"

The name "Liberty Parkway" is displayed on exactly two signs along the
side of the road. One in each direction of travel at the beginning of
the section bearing the name. The text is not readable in these two
pictures but I accept that these signs on the side of the road do
indeed say "Liberty Parkway":
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=cm5oVVWk80AaduDL7nyEqg&focus=photo
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=68OvirwWRGLfsukjcViWVg&focus=photo

Additionally, there is a trail named "Liberty Parkway Trail" that runs
along this section of highway and is mapped here:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1203739

However, highway direction signs at onramps and interchanges seem to
all say either "Creek Turnpike" or simply "Turnpike":
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=0n7y8MbjPuXcfsxgL7j1ww&focus=photo
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=7NgyVhy8W3AzaDhcs_wgmA&focus=photo
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=Z5vS2VS0-N1zvXSG8seBVw&focus=photo
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=aOye82EFOJuUZHrElTKwmA&focus=photo

So, how do we tag this situation? Both parties are claiming "ground
truth" supports their view and certainly there is evidence for both
names signed on the ground.

An argument can certainly be made that the name "Creek Turnpike" is
present on the route relation so the member ways can contain the more
specific "Liberty Parkway" name.

At the end of the day, this edit war is basically an argument over
tagging for the renderer. Which name gets displayed more prominently
on rendered maps that typically only use the name tag from ways. I'm
guessing if common renderers displayed the alt_name tag in some way,
one of the names would have been put there and this would never have
grown into an edit war in the first place.

I could just about flip a coin on this and be happy either way.
However since "Creek Turnpike" and "Turnpike" are used on all the
onramps, it does seem a little more appropriate for that to be
displayed more prominently with "Liberty Parkway" being put in the
alt_name tag on the ways.

Not that we have to do things the same as everyone else but as another
data point I checked a few other maps and they all seem to display
"Creek Turnpike" along this section although one of them also has an
alternate name of "Broken Arrow South Loop" which... I have no idea
where that comes from so let's just ignore that :)

Lastly, I will point out that an internet search for "Liberty Parkway"
with various additions of "Oklahoma" or "Tulsa" or "Broken Arrow" all
return top results that are about the trail. In fact, the only results
I see referring to the road are links to OSM ways that have been the
subject of this edit war.

Toby



On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 6:54 AM, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:
> Can we get a block, perhaps permanently, on this user?  36 edits have been
> bad, out of 38 total.  User does not appear to be reasonable in various
> changeset threads, 36 of which have been his inability to deal with the
> Liberty Parkway rename by the state legislature from over a decade ago.
> It's just getting rediculous at this point.
>
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