US National Forest shields

[claysmalley]

While we have a convenient map to indicate progress on state-level shields, we can't forget about the remaining federal shields. The United States Forest Service signposts its own numbered routes in and around the federal lands it manages.

Relation coverage is currently incomplete. network values for Forest Routes include US:FS and US:NF. This would need to be standardized before moving forward with implementing shields. Both networks typically have up to 3 digits in their ref values, though I wouldn't be surprised if there were ones out there with 4 digits.

Forest Route shield:

[1ec5]

network values for Forest Routes include US:FS and US:NF. This would need to be standardized before moving forward with implementing shields.

Could some mappers be using these two values to distinguish between forest primary and secondary routes? Or is this just a slow-motion transition from one tag to the other?

Puerto Rico (#240) also has Bosque Nacional shields that would look identical to the National Forest shields after simplification.

[claysmalley]

Oop. Clearly I needed to do a little more investigation. There are National Forest primary and secondary routes, though current network tagging gets even more complicated here.

The guidelines say to include the name of the National Forest in the network value, like US:NFSR:Chequamegon-Nicolet:NF. I don't think this is necessary, because shields are standardized across all National Forests (with the exception of the Spanish-language text on the Puerto Rico variant).

National Forest secondary route shields can be horizontal or vertical, depending on the level of maintenance of the roadway. The horizontal shields represent well-maintained roads that average vehicles can drive, while vertical shields represent less-maintained roads more suitable for hikers or 4-wheel drive vehicles. FSTopo maps distinguish all three shield designs, but there is currently no tagging scheme to distinguish horizontal from vertical shields.

[adamfranco]

While the shields are standardized across all Forests, the route numbers are only unique within a single Forest.

[claysmalley]

It's okay to reuse network values for the same route number in a different place if the same authority posts the shields. This is the case with various secondary state route networks, like in Virginia and Missouri.

[Pengor]

Just checked US Forest Service Route tagging in Washington and it is definitely rough. I counted 118 roads that I believe would be deserving of US:NFSR:Forest name:NF (the primary variety) tagging and found only 1 relation in the whole state (but disjointed and with a typo 😆)...

[claysmalley]

Separated BIA routes into a new ticket: #351

[claysmalley]

Once #355 is merged, the shield artwork will be available for these routes. The only thing left to do is reach consensus on tagging 😬

[adamfranco]

NF shields would be a nice addition to coincide with rendering tracks (#717). 😀

Example at map=15.45/43.976043/-73.077052

[ahallification]

If anything else, I wonder if we should chunk this into two different issues.

1. Shields for Forest Highways
2. Shields for Forest Roads

I'd advocate for doing Forest Highways first, as they're more important and the problem is vastly easier than for Forest Roads.

Forest Highways have only one shape and color across the country, and are predictably maintained. Forest Roads have what appears to be three different shapes, and two different orientations (horizontal and vertical, whereas sometimes the vertical signs have a down arrow in the shape, and other times not). Forest Highways should also always be signed, whereas Forest Roads are more likely to be all over the place. My hope is that by starting small (actually big, the Forest Highways), maybe it could encourage more tagging in OSM and thus, more interest in tackling the bigger challenge of Forest Roads.

Tagging
Having followed OSM Americana and how they've generally decided on tagging schemes for network=*, I do think the original guidelines found here should be tweaked. I'd suggest routes get tagged with network=US:NFSR:NF (should this be FH? I don't think NF is a logical derivative, but changing might require documentation, education, and cleanup) or network=US:NFSR:FR. Instead of including each forest name in the network=* tag, the forest name should be used in the operator= tag at the route level. Sophisticated data consumers would still be able to utilize the new tagging system in the way the used the old tagging system.

Thoughts? My two takeaways were:

1. Let's just do Forest Highways first, and
2. Should we simplify network=* tagging to omit the specific National forest but encourage that data in the operator= tag instead.

[claysmalley]

This subject has come up periodically in the OSM-US Slack, but nothing conclusive has come out of the discussion yet. The tagging scheme you're describing is pretty close to what I came up with, except my values were prefixed US:USFS:* to be consistent with road networks of other federal agencies (US:BIA, US:NPS:*). I think it would be preferable to have a set of three values corresponding to the three shield designs, but at this point it may take a formal proposal to get everyone to agree on what the values should be.

[claysmalley]

Taking the less formal route for a tagging proposal: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/network-tagging-proposal-for-usfs-roads/97057

[the-spui-ninja]

Are there any updates on this? Just mentioning because I found https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/9443117 while adding Albany County WY route relations and it brought the topic to my mind.

[ZeLonewolf]

I'm not clear on whether we have agreement on the tagging for these roads -- if that's settled out, then PR is certainly welcome.