Talk:Tag:route=road

Jeisenbe, where does this "discouraged" (Special:Diff/1943541) come from and where was it discussed? Description "rarely used" is not quite true as this is the second most used route relation type. Also, while it's possible to query ways by common characteristics, then isn't it – not having have to duplicate feature data for its parts – largely the point of having relations. Pikse 11:09, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Purpose?

"This relation is mainly used for major routes which have a ref=*". Highways having a ref tag on their ways is enough to associate them together. What is the purpose of this relation? --DaveF63 (talk) 11:41, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi, please see the addition to the article I just made in response to this question. Cheers. Multimodaal (talk) 09:21, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Member Direction Tagging

I am modifying a route in my area, where I am splitting up a road that now has some raised pedestrian area in the middle. I am splitting the section of road into two separate ways. Because the road is a member of the relation route=road I am simply adding the new second way to the relation right after the member appears in the relation. Does order matter here? Furthermore, can members that are part of the relation route=road have any directional tags like role=forward? Thanks. IanVG (talk) 03:09, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Streets versus routes

I've started a discussion on the forum regarding a suggestion to retag type=street relations in Australia as route=road versus route=street. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:01, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

@Pikse:: I don't understand your rationale for removal of Estonia as an example of an outlier (and particularly the removal of the Community Forum discussion). To prevent further misunderstanding, would you clarify what you mean by "these particular local roads are *not* identified only by a name tag"? Looking at a random street in Tallinn such as Võidujooksu tänav, it has a route relation assigned a ref -- however, I doubt that "7841187" is actually signposted anywhere, and looks like an ID in some kind of national register. "Things having the same ref" is a fairly weak reason to have relations -- this is not the way things are usually done elsewhere in the world, so it deserves a mention.

For example, in Serbia we also have a national register of streets, where they are identified by a longish numerical identifier. What we do is to tag every segment with Key:ref:RS:ulica, and I believe a similar approach is used in most other places. While "the Estonian way" is not ipso facto wrong, it is unusual enough that it should be documented. Duja (talk) 14:01, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Earlier I explained this further in Community Forum thread which is linked above (including comment about coherent numbering system for different types of roads). This sentence about Estonia example was misleadingly written in a way as if it contrasted the previous sentence which says that (usually) roads "identified only by a name=* tag do not belong to a relation". As you mention, given roads are actually also identified by ref tag, also in most cases there are wikidata and network tags, just like is the case for other types of roads that have relations outside of cities. It may not be common to use relations for minor roads but as long as it isn't wrong it doesn't seem right to highlight given example in this odd context.

As for the question whether to tag every road segment vs. use relations, this as far as I can see concerns major roads as well, in this regard e.g. a couple of years ago someone made an edit here suggesting that route=road relations shouldn't exist at all (see my comment on this at the top).

As for marked or signposted roads, note that there are also national roads like this for which road number (ref) normally isn't verifiable on the ground but road is still marked by kilometer posts.

As for link to Community Forum thread, I didn't notice this was also included in their edit. Though, this thread is already linked here in talk page, and so I doubt it was additionally needed on subject page. Summary "how to distinguish marked on-road routes from ordinary streets and roads" is in my opinion also odd as this is not what was really discussed. This discussion at first centered around whether/how streets should be modelled as relations, and later, if suggested that route=road should be used only for a subset of roads, we tried to clarify which subset is that but unfortunately no clear answer come forth. Let alone it's unclear from where they took the premise that only marked or signposted roads can/should use route=road (it never said so here on this doc page). Pikse 15:38, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, fair enough. I'm still not sure where I stand on the issue. Perhaps it would be better to write a section about use cases in a number of countries (where the Estonian one would be at an extreme end but not "wrong"), instead of portraying it as a weird outlier. Until Someone(TM) does that, we're probably better off without it. Duja (talk) 22:06, 19 December 2023 (UTC)