New Zealand touring route shields

[1ec5]

New Zealand’s Traffic Control Devices Manual provides for named touring routes marked by one-off shields.

So far, two touring routes have been tagged network=NZ:Touring and network=NZ:Tourist.

Originally posted by @1ec5 in #379 (comment)

[1ec5]

two touring routes have been tagged network=NZ:Touring and network=NZ:Tourist

At least on directional signs, both of these routes are marked by the white-on-brown Twin Coast Discovery shield shown above. One of the relations is tagged ref=24, but I can’t find any evidence of “24” being posted in a manner useful for wayfinding.

The Pacific Coast Highway is signposted as described in the TCD, but its route relation has no tags other than name.

The Thermal Explorer Highway (called the “Geyser Highway” in the TCD) is fashionably tagged ref=🌋. As with other one-off routes, we’ll need it to have a unique network value in order to render an actual geyser. It’s unlikely we’d be able to render a volcano emoji properly even if that were the correct glyph.

Typically, for one-off shields like New Zealand’s tourist routes, we’d expect unique network values, since anything else would be rather brittle. It would be great if these network values were something like NZ:TCD.

[1ec5]

We can use the EPS file linked above as the basis for shields in this style. TCD sign specification images are licensed for commercial and noncommercial reuse on the condition that they not be used to post lookalike signs along the roadway. At the size that we’d be showing these shields on the map, even a hard copy of Americana posted along a New Zealand highway certainly wouldn’t run afoul of this condition.

[1ec5]

It just occurred to me that this repository is under CC0, which is technically incompatible with even such a permissive license. Fortunately, at the typical shield size, we’ll be eliminating so much detail that the resulting glyph can’t possibly be eligible for copyright protection anyways.

[k-yle]

Hi, I'm from New Zealand 👋

There is a difference between "Touring Routes" and "Tourist Routes".

• There is only 1 Tourist Route left, (top-right shield in this example) and the signage is unmaintained and slowly disappearing. Tourist Routes have a brown shield, with the non-standard shape. There's probably no point in mapping this rare example...
• Touring routes have a variety of different shields, and use pictorial refs like 🍇/🌋/🌊/🏔️ instead of letter and numbers. This is a list of all the ones I know of:
  • Pacific Coast Highway - bottom right shield - network=NZ:Touring:PCH
  • Twin Coast Discovery Highway - top right shield - network=NZ:Touring:TCDH
  • Thermal Explorer Highway - bottom left shield - network=NZ:Touring:TEH
  • Classic New Zealand Wine Trail - shield - network=NZ:Touring:CNZWT
  • Matakana Wine Trail - shield - network=NZ:Touring:MWT
  • unknown name - left shield - network=NZ:Touring:?????
  • Volcanic Loop Highway - middle shield - network=NZ:Touring:VLH
  • Southern Scenic Route - shield - network=NZ:Touring:SSR
  • Western Ring Route - shield - network=NZ:WRR
  • Central Otago Touring Route - not signposted
  • Great Alpine Highway this is an alt_name for state highway 73
  • Forgotten World Highway this is an alt_name for state highway 43
  • Foothills Scenic Route - exists on wikipedia without a reference, can't find any infomation online
  • Alpine Pacific Triangle - this is route 70
  • West Coast Touring Route this is an alt_name for part of state highway 6
  • Western Bays Highway this is an alt_name for state highway 32
  • Inland Scenic Route - this is route 72

I doubt anyone would object to the team from this project inventing new network tags and/or changing the emoji-ref tags on these routes. There's only 1 or 2 of us who actually maintain road routes in NZ

[1ec5]

There is only 1 Tourist Route left, (top-right shield in this example) and the signage is unmaintained and slowly disappearing. Tourist Routes have a brown shield, with the non-standard shape. There's probably no point in mapping this rare example...

Oh wow, that’s a subtle distinction! The brown shields I spotted above must’ve been a coincidence from the Twin Coast Discovery Highway running concurrently or something.

We can support a one-of-a-kind route shield if it’s still a real route. Currently, Tourist Drive 24 is labeled with an unadorned “24” based on ref=24 and the unrecognized network=NZ:Tourist. If the route is vestigial and unlikely to be useful for wayfinding, unsigned_ref or old_ref would hide it from the map.

Touring routes have a variety of different shields, and use pictorial refs like 🍇/🌋/🌊/🏔️ instead of letter and numbers.

The emoji are cute. 😄 @claysmalley noticed we already mark the Twin Coast Discovery Highway as “🌊”. GL JS isn’t even supposed to support emoji (mapbox/mapbox-gl-js#4001), but emoji are supported by the browser APIs we happen to be using to composite numbers onto shields. (The other emoji don’t show up because there’s no network.)

I think a distinct network value for each route would be appropriate, because the shields don’t share much in common graphically. You could still group them together with NZ:Touring:* as a common prefix. You could even keep the emoji refs as a, uh, plain text fallback for other data consumers that don’t understand network. However, we probably shouldn’t rely on the emoji in this project. It would be difficult to find an appropriate emoji for each route in this system.

Let us know if you end up retagging any route relations, and we can get the vector tiles refreshed in short order, unblocking the addition of shield artwork.

[k-yle]

Would it be better to spell out the route names in the network tag, or use abbreviations? e.g. network=NZ:Touring:VolcanicLoopHighway or network=NZ:Touring:VLH

Regarding tourist route 24, I think it should be changed to unsigned_ref since the signage is very sparse and not maintained. Then we don't need to worry about rendering it...

[1ec5]

Would it be better to spell out the route names in the network tag, or use abbreviations? e.g. network=NZ:Touring:VolcanicLoopHighway or network=NZ:Touring:VLH

I don’t have a strong opinion about this, but I’d be inclined to go with the shorter version, since you already have name. With one-off routes the U.S., it depends on how people tend to refer to the route in brief, but we’ve probably used initialisms more than spelled-out names. If future routes cause naming conflicts, they could be spelled out without causing any problems for data consumers.

[k-yle]

I've added network tags to each of these routes. See this updated comment and taginfo

[1ec5]

The emoji are cute. 😄 @claysmalley noticed we already mark the Twin Coast Discovery Highway as “🌊”. GL JS isn’t even supposed to support emoji (mapbox/mapbox-gl-js#4001), but emoji are supported by the browser APIs we happen to be using to composite numbers onto shields. (The other emoji don’t show up because there’s no network.)

The emoji were removed about a year ago.