Former Alignments

[CharlotteAllisonCDTG]

Will former alignments of highways be added to the project?  The main highway that I am thinking of is "GA GA223".  It currently extends from Thomson, Georgia to Augusta, Georgia, however, it's western terminus used to be farther to the west.  I have driven this entire former segment.

[oscar]

Our general approach is not to include former alignments. One notable example, which caused some heartburn, was the short numbered English highway (A344?) that used to take you to a parking lot very close to Stonehenge. It got truncated, then completely decommissioned (now you have to take an official tour bus from the visitor centre to the site). That route was accordingly shortened in, then completely removed from, the Highway Browser, even though some of us had driven part or all of that route and liked having our England user maps show our drives to Stonehenge.

There is an early draft of a possible historic US routes system. But that is limited to former routes you can still drive, and where somebody has gone through the trouble of posting "Historic US 66" or similar signs.

[Jim]

I support our current approach of maintaining current alignments.  I'm not sure we've really decided how the historical sets will  work.

[CharlotteAllisonCDTG]

Thank you for replying.

I am also wondering about what will happen when a highway gets moved, as that would also fall under the "former alignments" heading.

[Jim]

When a route moves to a new alignment (such as the opening of a new bypass) we update the route in TM and make an entry in the highway data updates so travelers can decide if they need to change anything.  In some cases, such as a new bypass route for a US highway, the old alignment remains in TM as a business route or as a state highway.  In other cases, the route ceases to exist from TM's perspective.

[CharlotteAllisonCDTG]

I'm an editor on Wikipedia, so I totally understand that a former alignment of a highway could become a business route or some other special route.

I just want to know, if an alignment that I traveled on ceases to exist, and the highway gets re-routed, that the special route doesn't get added to my list.  Also, since I didn't travel on the new alignment, so I don't want that to be on my list, either.

[si404]

One notable example, which caused some heartburn, was the short numbered English highway (A344?) that used to take you to a parking lot very close to Stonehenge.

A344 yes. It didn't cause me heartburn to remove it here (even with the debate about whether the still-driveable stub was still A344 making my life harder), though the fact that after thousands of years, the fork in the road at Stonehenge ceased to exist did annoy me.

I left a starred point on the A303 for the former junction, and the other end (A360) was a four-way junction, so it just got renamed after the B road arm with an A344 alt-label.


As has been said, former sections of US routes that are signed with Historic US signs are drafted for future addition to the site, and many roads - in the US in particular - have the old road as a bannered route or a state route, or something mapped here.

I just want to know, if an alignment that I traveled on ceases to exist, and the highway gets re-routed, that the special route doesn't get added to my list.  Also, since I didn't travel on the new alignment, so I don't want that to be on my list, either.

If you have travelled along a highway in 'Alanland' - lets call it A123, between the M456 in Ashville and the B789 in Canton, including through Bridgehampton, and Bridgehampton gets bypassed and the bypass is part of the A123, with the old route numbered something else then

AN A123 M456 B789

in your .list file would now show you taking the bypass as that is the route of A123 between those two points. However, on the updates page, and entry will have been added along the lines of:

2000-01-01 Alanland A123 an.a123 Route removed from Goat Track (now A1230) and relocated onto Bridgehampton Bypass between A1230_N and A1230_S
2000-01-01 Alanland A1230 an.a1230 New Route

so, if you want your .list file to accurately map your travels, then you can see the update and change it to be:

AN A123 M456 A1230_N
AN A123 A1230_S B789
AN A1230 A123_N A123_S