I know the ways guidance for 4-digit unshielded State Route numbers is to remove them. IIRC it was because those were legacy names and no one uses them. However, in the western part of the state some of the PennDOT Districts still refer to the four digit numbers when posting closures so this makes them difficult to find when we remove them in our map. Should the guidance be changed to retain these as a corrected SR-xxxx number in the alt named location so they are searchable in WME?
Anyway to get these closures in different format? Where do you get them?
Most of these closures are posted via PennDOT on 511pa.com or via press release emails - We can try to look them up on the PennDOT webmap but that takes additional time and not really possible via mobile.
I get them as press release emails from PennDOT in District 10 on upcoming construction and emergency closures or traffic restrictions and from the PaRapidBridges “Bridge Blog”. Unless PennDot also releases the PaRapidBridges information, it usually only is available from their site.
I’ve gotten frustrated while searching for roads referred to in the press releases from PennDot if I’m at work with limited time and just given up since I can’t find the corresponding name in Waze.
Example email from PennDot district 10
Email example from PaRapidBridges
Both of these examples show prominent references to 4-digit SR numbers. Sometimes I actually think PennDot’s maps are more outdated than ours. They OFTEN refer to local roads by old names that aren’t in GIS references any longer. For these reasons I think we should maintain 4-digit alt names. Especially if the main reason for not keeping them is that “no one uses that name any more”. These examples show information contrary to that reasoning.
Can anyone present a downside to keeping the old route name as an alternate other than the effort to add the name?
We would still be adding the new name as per the guidelines.
We do this often with street names when they change.
And even if it does not help the Wazer directly, indirectly when an editor can search the route number and get the updates to the map timely, we help the Wazer.
The big problem with these 4-digit SR names is that the same route number could be used in every county in PA for completely different roads.
In the past, WME search results did not give you context.
In the latest results, you get a lot more context than we used to get before, and it is actually readable.
So I think the biggest argument against having these numbers there for search (results were confusing and useless) has just been addressed.
In fact, during the recent flooding, once I found the road (in this case SR-1004 in Armstrong county), I added that as an alt at one end of the route. Just to make it easier to find it again later.
I’m in favor of updating the wiki. It should say to retain the 4-digit SR numbers in the Alts. They are used by SOME OF the PennDOT districts to identify roads in these announcements. The simplest and most straightforward thing to do is to retain them throughout the state.
One thing I noticed about the SR names is they don’t always follow the same road name path, so there may be 5 different road names that all have the same SR number, so even with the SR number, you’d still need cross streets to find the correct SR segments. And if you have the cross street names, is the SR number really needed?
I’m trying to get someone from PennDot to help us with this…
RussPA – in some PennDOT announcements, they do not give the road name at all.
And the named cross roads may each cross more than one road, so knowing the SR (even in alt name) really speeds up finding the correct road to close.
Scripts that give segment alt name pop-up help.
I never saw a downside to them. I wish I hadnt removed hundreds of them. Im simply changing them to SR-xxxx now from State Rte
Two reasons they were recommended for removal, was they were extra data that had to be carried on the database, and they were mostly wrong from the original base map import. Since we no longer have to worry about the former and we have good references for the latter now, I can support their retention now, but I don’t see the value in making a huge effort to do so, since it doesn’t directly help the user.
They don’t directly help the end user.
They do help the editors.
It’s a shame they are not to be trusted. It’s not like we can explicitly mark the ones we do trust - only chip away at them, same as we do with all the roads in less-edited areas.
How about we make a change to the guidance in the Pennsylvania Wiki Page? This would not require adding SR #s, but it would not require removing them, either.