And if you're gonna grab a set of permalinks, you might as well rename those segments while you're at it...


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I noticed some of the ramp examples are wrong. Don't know how long it's been this way.

Road Naming (USA): Exit ramps and Entrance ramps (on-ramps)

I updated some of the outdated "US Hwy" nomenclature, but there are a few things I'd like to discuss here before making any edits.

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Entrance ramp formatting

For entrance ramps, use this format: "to [street name] [direction] / [control city]", where applicable. For example,
"to I-10 W / Baton Rouge"
"to Clearview Pkwy N / Mandeville"
"to US-90 Business W"
"to LA-1 Thibodaux / Lockport"

As I understand it, we use a colon to split numbered highways and control cities, like "to I-10 W: Baton Rouge", and "to LA-1: Thibodaux / Lockport", when there isn't already a colon in the name (as in numbered exits, to avoid a "double colon").

If I'm mistaken, then the last point should at least be "to LA-1 / Thibodaux / Lockport".

But "to LA-1: Thibodaux / Lockport" and "to I-10 W: Baton Rouge" make a lot more sense to me. This would also require changing the first line (before the list), for the sake of clarity: "to [numbered highway designation] [direction]: [street name] / [street name] / [control city] / [control city]". This clarifies what to do when multiple street names and/or control cities are given.

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State routes

A small point, but should we now remove any references to "State Rte xx", changing them to "SR-xx"?

A link to the state-by-state format page would be useful there, as well.

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Exit naming guidance / insight

This is just something I've noticed in my interstate cleanup over the past few weeks. It'd be a new section, or at least a new bullet point, on the observed signage practices of the AASHTO.

Though most of the interstates in Louisiana were almost totally right already, one thing I noticed rather often was that signs for the same exit are often not identical -- often, control cities or street names will be in a different order on one than they are on the other, and occasionally the same is true of numbered highway shields. Here's what I've noticed:

• When the exit is signed for two cities, or for two roads which meet at the exit, the cities or roads are listed from left to right.
  • For example,
  • I-49 meets LA-6 at exit 138. The exit serves Many, to the west, and Natchitoches, to the east.
    • When traveling northbound, Many is to the left, and Natchitoches is to the right. The sign lists "Many" first, then "Natchitoches".
    • When traveling southbound, Many is to the right, and Natchitoches is to the left. The sign lists "Natchitoches first, then "Many".
  • Parish Rd 16 and LA-3276 meet at I-49 exit 191. LA-3276 continues to the west, and Parish Rd 16 continues to the east. (The alt names are incorrect at the time of this writing.)
    • When traveling northbound, LA-3276 is to the left, and Parish Rd 16 is to the right. The exit sign shows the LA-3276 shield first, and the Parish Rd 16 shield second.
    • When traveling southbound, Parish Rd 16 is to the left, and LA-3276 is to the right. The exit sign shows the Parish Rd 16 shield first, and the LA-3276 shield second.
  • City Park Ave and Metairie Rd meet at I-10 exit 231A in New Orleans. Metairie Rd continues westward into Metairie and City Park Ave continues eastward toward City Park.
    • Traveling westbound (northward here), Metairie Rd is to the left, and City Park Ave is to the right. The exit sign lists Metairie Rd first, then City Park Ave second.
    • Traveling eastbound (southward here), City Park Ave is to the left, and Metairie Rd is to the right. The exit sign lists City Park Ave first, then Metairie Rd second.
• When the exit is signed for two roads, one of which is encountered before the other, the first road encountered will be listed first.
  • For example, I-10 W exit 231B serves Florida Blvd and West End Blvd. Though Florida Blvd is to the right and West End Blvd is straight ahead, Florida Blvd is encountered first, before West End Blvd.
    • The exit sign lists Florida Blvd first, then West End Blvd.
  • A similar occurrence is found just to the north, at I-610 E exit 1A, for West End Blvd and Canal Blvd.
  • In a somewhat more extreme or obvious example, I-10 exit 226 serves Clearview Pkwy and the Huey Long Bridge. The Huey is a few miles away; Clearview is at the end of the ramp.
  • Similarly, I-10 W exit 228 serves Causeway Blvd and Mandeville. Mandeville is about 30 miles north, across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway; Causeway Blvd is right there.
  • A more complex example: the same exit eastbound also serves Bonnabel Blvd. To get to Mandeville, you go north on Causeway; since that ramp is encountered first, both are listed before Bonnabel Blvd, which comes later.

This may be a little pedantic, and it serves little more than an illustrative purpose, but it does explain why we should be careful before naming exits the same way on either sides of the same road.

And I know all my examples are from Louisiana, and that each state is responsible for its own interstate system. But they all follow the same AASHTO guidelines, and I've noticed this in other states as well, especially the first style -- the second is less common, as it naturally only really occurs in metropolitan areas. I've recently swept interstates in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, noticing the same pattern throughout.

edit Also worth noting:

The left-right rule depends on the geometry of the exit. Nonstandard exit designs will sometimes yield the same ordering from both directions.

• From I-12 exit 60, Pinnacle Pkwy is a left turn from both sides, and E Brewster Rd is a right turn from both sides.
• From I-12 exit 83, Pearl River is a left turn from both sides, and Slidell is a right turn for both sides.

AndyPoms wrote:Short answers for a VERY long post...

Entrance ramp formatting
The colon ":" is only used after exit numbers as in "Exit ##: US-1 / Anytown / Othertown".

The problem is the way this wiki article was written. The standard originally had no punctuation between shields and road/city names because, before TTS, it saved space and we didn't need the pause. I should know, I'm the original author of that ramp naming guide. When TTS showed up, and the app started looking nicer (v2.0), the standards were quietly changed to use a colon for the first major split (like "to I-10: New Orleans") and additional slashes where additional splits were required, to avoid the double colon, "Exit 220: I-310 S / Boutte / Houma". I fielded a proposal which included the double colon to bring some consistency between onramps and exits, but it wasn't passed (IIRC, we had over 50% approval, but under 60%, and we had just voted to implement a 60% "supermajority" requirement to pass anything like that). I'd made the mistake of editing the guide prematurely, and when it didn't pass, someone went through and changed just about every colon in there to a slash. That's not something that passed either.

State routes
Not all states have converted. Many are waiting for an official solution (i.e. State Abbreviations).

OK. I'll make a note here, then, that we can't overlook this bit of the Wiki once we pass what's being discussed right now -- like we did when the US route standard was implemented (a year and a half ago, but only properly last month).

Exit naming guidance / insight
Match the BGS (Big Green Sign) for the direction you are traveling when you take the ramp.

That's the gist of it, yeah. It's a long-winded explanation of why the signs differ, although all that matters to the editor is that the signs differ.

AndyPoms wrote:

skbun wrote:The easy way to put this into the wiki is 'What the sign says is what you list'. This way it's a simple matter of comparing what's on the road to what's in Waze. I mean, heck, exit 18 on I-405 in Kirkland has a BGS that refers to a state route that hasn't existed since 2010 (SR-908) - and it's only on a sign in the southbound direction, but the sign still has it on there. So, it goes on.

Yea, but think of me driving on that road... I don't know SR-908 hasn't existed since 2010, all I know is that's what the sign says, so that's the exit I need to take...

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I think you're misunderstanding skbun

If it goes on the sign, it goes on the segment.

AndyPoms wrote:

skbun wrote:I would though want to put one advisory, exception, etc. to what I just said though, which is that a BGS's content is the stuff in the biggest letters. There are sometimes OTHER things listed on such signs but should NOT be included. Examples I've seen: 'Hospital', 'Toll bridge', 'Scenic road', and so on. In almost all cases, these additions are not in white-on-green letters. That said, they're just extras that make TTS chattier than it needs to be.

This makes sense to me... However there are places where the only sign isn't the green one... For example in CT Exit 62 on I-95 only has brown signs - https://maps.google.com/maps?q=hammonas ... 2,,0,-3.19

Yeah, it's an exception, though. Put all the primary info that's on the exit sign on the segment. Additional brown signs are typically to be disregarded, as are additional green signs, unless they're particularly relevant.

CBenson wrote:Up until recently, I never put the "/" between the [ST-##] and the [street name] or between the [street name] and the [control city]. I just didn't see the need for a visual break or an audio pause there to make the instructions clear to me. My logic was that was what the wiki examples seemed to suggest and there is no reason to add extra length or TTS time to the names. However, some users have said that they were confused without the pause and others said they interpreted the wiki to include those slashes, so I've been including them in my current edits.

I never really thought the visual pause was necessary, which is why I didn't include it in the original guidelines. The audio running together can really throw me off, though.

Not the first thing, but the first group of things. The three groups are exit numbers, shields, and names. You'll have between one and three for every segment. If I-39 N and US-72 W run concurrently toward Townsville and Babcock, then "to I-39 N / US-72 W: Townsville / Babcock".


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That was basically my proposal (mentioned a few posts above), but about half of the people around at the time didn't like it because of the double colon. I think it works pretty well.


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I'm sorry to enter so late into this discussion -- can only keep up with so much. I was drawn here from another post to a different forum...

It was my understanding from the Meetup 2013 that we had agreed upon US-XXX for US Hwy and SR-XXX for both State Route and State Highway (just as skbun first posted in this thread). This was tied also to the shield generation, but I know that conversation later diverged after the Meetup. There was an issue that some states needed a different standard because of local naming conventions within those states, which makes sense. I prefer US-XXX and SR-XXX because it takes less real estate on the client and is a more common standard from State Hwy XXX, State Route XXX, Hwy XXX, etc.

With the knowledge expressed in this forum so far, are we going to a state-by-state naming convention?

OK, so I am a bit confused by the discussion in this thread after reading through much of it again.

It now seems that there is a "fad" of everyone naming roads based upon state names. For instance, in New Mexico, I know that some people use NM14 to refer to the State Hwy 14, so I could easily say that New Mexico state roads and highways should all be NM-XXX.

What I don't understand here is that I thought that there was a universal naming convention for the US, which would be more preferable than 50 or so different naming conventions. Why may this be important?

(1) We have a whole lot more editors that don't read the Wiki than do read it. This will never change.

(2) We have a lot of users of the app that go across many state lines, whether it is in those tiny northeastern states or the larger ones out west and south. This would appear to be confusing to see all these different standards.

To be clear, I thought we were moving toward a standard of: SR-XXX (for state route/highway) and CR-xxx (for county road).

On the other hand, some of the other mapping systems do name highways by state, eg NM-14, AZ-314, and even have shields on state highways that are exactly what you see on the road.

So has consensus moved to that we ought to go from one US-wide standard to state-specific standards?

mapcat wrote:...IDK, but it seems that the overwhelming presence of one standard in the basemapped roads would indicate a standard, or at least a starting point. ...

This was my feeling as well. The basemap seemed to have a fairly uniform standard for states as "State Route" and "State Hwy" with other variations like just "Hwy." No doubt there was additional local variation. From the discussions at the Meetup 2012 around naming and shields (because they seemed connected in main and alternate fields), I perceived (not a decision) to move to SR-XXX for them all. I realize there has been an evolution of all those discussions. I researched the local NM naming of Highway versus Route and found no consistency of definition. Now we see a divergence of naming from shields, which is fine, but has an altered implication of urgency (from the Meetup) that it doesn't matter what we name the main and alt fields because shields will not source from that data.

While I have an opinion, I really don't care which standard is used, but we need one. It would seem we should come to an informed consensus across a majority of the states with everyone weighing in. Here are some of the principles that seem key. Please update/extend:

Assumptions/Issues

(1) Shields will generate from a data layer separate from names.

(2) What is the purpose of the alternate name field? In which way should it be used? Waze has certainly invested GUI time on making this work. We should know their intent.

(3) The TTS has an impact on this decision because SR is pronounced State Route, as far as I know (not State Road or some other things).

(4) There is a app display issue to consider here. "State Route XXX" takes a lot more space on the display than "SR-XXX" or some other abbreviation. Is that important?

(5) Is the basemap original standard set (full name or abbreviated) of any value in this discussion, or is it just ancient information?

Questions:

(1) Should there be a uniform cross-USA standard in naming State Route, State Highway?

(2) Should there be a standard for County Road, such as CR-XXX?

(3) Should there be a state-by-state standard, like NC-XXX for each state?

(4) Should the state-by-state name also exists in the name or alt name fields along with SR-XXX or whatever standard is picked?

(5) For future shield generation layer, can we get different artwork for each state to coincide with the road signs?