General Question on County Roads

[kjslaughter]

Curiosity question: are you guys looking at ever adding county roads?  Or is this just too much and too complicated to ever add.  I know Florida and Alabama both use county roads a lot, but I have no idea where the central route files are kept (state level or at each county, a frightening idea)

[yakra]

Short answer is no, too much & too complicated. We don't plan to get into that level of detail below the state level.

[Highway63]

Long answer: Nooooooooooooo.

[rickmastfan67]

^^^

Would be suicide to attempt it in Florida.

[neroute2]

^^^

Would be suicide to attempt it in Florida.

Depends on county. Osceola would be easy.

[andrepoiy]

Could there be an exemption for Ontario highways? Or at least just the ones that were formerly Ontario highways.

If you're not familiar with Ontario highways, in 1997, the provincial government decided to cut costs by "downloading" a large portion of the provincial highways. (Downloading in road terms means decommissioning and giving ownership to county or municipalities). Thus, some Ontario highways have large gaps in them, and other routes were entirely killed off or significantly shortened. Thus, our network isn't really "complete".

Some examples:

Highway 2, used to go from Windsor to Quebec, is now a 1 km long stretch in Gananoque.

Highway 5 used to go from East York in Toronto to Paris (a town near Brantford), now is 12 km long.

Highway 7 used to go from Sarnia to Ottawa, is now two sections, and no longer going to Sarnia.

Highway 11 used to follow Yonge Street all the way down to downtown Toronto. Toronto no longer has any provincial highways (not including freeways) running through it.

[rickmastfan67]

Could there be an exemption for Ontario highways? Or at least just the ones that were formerly Ontario highways.

Sadly, no.  We only do what's currently signed in a system, and we don't do former highways.

And yes, I do remember the old highways before the downloading myself.  Especially the QEW segment east of the 427.  Glad Toronto finally gave the Gardiner Expressway exit numbers, including the segment used to have numbers when it was part of the QEW, based off of the QEW mileage.

[yakra]

What are your thoughts on the secondary & tertiary highways up north?

[rickmastfan67]

What are your thoughts on the secondary & tertiary highways up north?

I would classify them like all the FM routes in Texas.  Something that I want to get to in the future when I have the time to craft them.

[oscar]

Could there be an exemption for Ontario highways? Or at least just the ones that were formerly Ontario highways.

Sadly, no.  We only do what's currently signed in a system, and we don't do former highways.

One exception to that is historic US highways. But that system (not yet a final addition to TM) is limited to former US highways explicitly signed as "historic". Even that historic route system is controversial, with some of us favoring its removal, or at least cutting it back to the most famous historic routes like US 66.