MD: A couple route extensions?

[mapmikey]

MD 546 continues south of I-68 to Mels Rd.  HLR shows this and though not posted it is obvious when in the field this is the case.  MD 546 should be extended to this the same way MD 179, 367, 610 etc are extended past their logical endpoints to their actual ones.  Also note that the label for FinRd should be MD 946 which is fully posted at MD 546.

Another that I am a lot less sure about changing is MD 56. There is a MD 56 West reassurance shield leaving the interchange followed closely by an END State Maintenance sign - https://goo.gl/maps/Gp7FDr7NdB2D3qaV6 - this distance might be too short to bother, though. 

[Duke87]

MD 546 continues south of I-68 to Mels Rd.  HLR shows this and though not posted it is obvious when in the field this is the case.  MD 546 should be extended to this the same way MD 179, 367, 610 etc are extended past their logical endpoints to their actual ones.

Soo... this is reminiscent of something there are several instances of in Utah, where a route rather than ending at a freeway interchange ends at the next intersection past it, because the state continues maintaining the road to that point. The implemented policy on this situation in Utah is to omit the dangling tail of the route past the interchange unless it is explicitly signed as going in both directions.

But yes, MD 367 and 610 make decent counterpoints, they have similarly small dangling tails which are included but not explicitly signed (197 is longer, stretches almost half a mile past US 50).

I... am going to go ahead and extend MD 546, favoring consistency within the same state. Even though I don't really like this.

Also note that the label for FinRd should be MD 946 which is fully posted at MD 546.

Well that definitely needs fixing.

Another that I am a lot less sure about changing is MD 56. There is a MD 56 West reassurance shield leaving the interchange followed closely by an END State Maintenance sign - https://goo.gl/maps/Gp7FDr7NdB2D3qaV6 - this distance might be too short to bother, though.

Yeah, that's an end state maintenance sign at the edge of the interchange footprint. Can be safely dismissed as equivalent to ending at the interchange.

[yakra]

I... am going to go ahead and extend MD 546, favoring consistency within the same state. Even though I don't really like this.

Maybe instead adopt a Utah-like and/or signage-based approach statewide?

[Duke87]

I... am going to go ahead and extend MD 546, favoring consistency within the same state. Even though I don't really like this.

Maybe instead adopt a Utah-like and/or signage-based approach statewide?

I like that less than having MD 546 be inconsistent with what's done in Utah.

Within Utah, there is only the very specific circumstance that when the logical endpoint of a route is at a freeway interchange, often state maintenance will extend a block or two beyond in order to cover the approach to the interchange from the far side, ending where the project limits from when the interchange was constructed were. In these specific conditions, it causes little indigestion to ignore the dangling end; the route can be said to end at the interchange in some sense.

Maryland is messier - MD 546 is the only one of the examples just named that is comparable to what's in Utah. 197, 367, and 610 are sections of plain road extending variable distances past the route's logical endpoint, whose inclusion cannot be explained by "well this is where the limits of a past project to construct an interchange were". So there the ball isn't close enough to the cup to take a gimme on it, the extension of the route has to be taken seriously as an independent segment of the state highway system.


I'm kind of just resigning to the fact here that I could spend all night overthinking this, but ultimately things are going to be imperfect in some way and that's not really avoidable. After all, route clinching is an attempt to make a game out of something its designers never intended to be a game. It is thus inherently full of inconsistencies and subjectivities. We just do the best we can to smooth them out.