usaca: California State Highways

[Bickendan]

I suspect G/HSt was a point centered between a pair of a one-way couplet.

[oscar]

Yes.

[oscar]

I've finished "finalizing" all usaca routes, including synching them with each other and with California routes in active systems (usai, usaib, usaus, usausb), streamlining files to reduce shaping and other points, and truncating or splitting some routes affected by relinquishments to local maintenance.

As discussed above, I might've sometimes overdone it a little on visible waypoint removals, and am open to undoing some of them so long as the overall point density remains reasonable.

Most "near-miss-points" (out-of-synch route junctions) in CA have been eliminated or flagged as false positives. Those include a few involving the preview usanp system, which were manageable in number, and also I contributed many of usanp's California route files so I went ahead and fixed their junctions with other routes. I have not addressed the far more numerous NMPs, and associated broken concurrences, with historic routes in California. Those routes were synched with older versions of usaca and other files while I was still working on them, and will need to be re-synched later (preferably after usaca is activated).

I think all broken concurrences among usaca/usai/usaib/usaus/usausb routes have been eliminated. Any that I've missed, please let me know.

There are still relinquishments I need to figure out how to handle, including but not limited to CA 82 in San Jose, CA 39 in Buena Park, CA 2 between I-405 and West Hollywood, and most of CA 19. I'll address those, and others I think won't require route file changes (including but not limited to CA 146 in Soledad, and parts of CA 58 and 178 in Bakersfield), later.

[yakra]

I think all broken concurrences among usaca/usai/usaib/usaus/usausb routes have been eliminated. Any that I've missed, please let me know.

I-280 @ 48 is centered on San Pedro Rd.
CA1 @ 48(280) is centered on Washington St.

[oscar]

Pull request submitted to fix broken CA 1/I-280 concurrence. Also adds back CA 187 (looks like I jumped the gun on its relinquishment), and tweaks CA 19 to lay groundwork for additional changes including perhaps adding back CA 164 (similar to CA 260, signed as part of CA 19 rather than its legislative route number).

[neroute2]

http://tm.teresco.org/hb/index.php?r=ca.ca091
The part of SR 91 west of I-110 was transferred to the cities. But I drove it last month (east from I-405) and it's still well signed, both at the exit from I-405 and on reassurance. A check of the Goog also shows signage (as of May 2017) at SR 107 and on southbound SR 1; near the west end there's also reassurance westbound at Prospect and both ways at Meadows/Harper.

[oscar]

The HB has part of CA 91 west of I-110, to Vermont Avenue. The Streets and Highways Code has 91's west end at Vermont Avenue.

West of Vermont Avenue, the Code says that former 91 is not a state highway, nor eligible to be added back to the state highway system. So any 91 signage west of Vermont Ave. seems to be just remnant signage, with no obligation for the cities that now control those segments to maintain route 91 signage. This differs from some relinquishments (usually in the middle of a route) I've kept in the HB for now, where local governments are required to maintain continuation signage to tie together the route segments still state-maintained, an obligation often but not always completely ignored.

How to handle relinquishments is something I'm still noodling over, including consistency with systems in other states (like Florida State Highways, where it seems all relinquished segments are omitted from the draft HB, even if that chops up a route into multiple disconnected pieces). But my tentative approach to California includes at least treating end-of-route relinquishments as truncations, which is what happened to CA 91 west of Vermont Ave.

[neroute2]

It's my understanding that TM goes by signage. So shouldn't we have a separate system for locally signed state highways? This would also include SR 130 east of Mount Hamilton.

[oscar]

For TM, signage is usually necessary, but not sufficient. Usually this comes up for routes that are officially designated, but unsigned, which with exceptions (most notably for unsigned Interstates like I-444 in Tulsa) we omit from the HB. The opposite situation, where highways are signed as state routes even though they have been officially removed from the state highway system (in California, usually by state law), we normally omit them from the HB too. It's pretty common to find "remnant signage" of decommissioned routes, something of great interest in the road enthusiast community but doesn't do anything for TM.

In California, I've made a tentative exception for highway segments that are officially not in the state system but state law requires them to be signed as such anyway in some fashion. Since usaca is a preview system, that tentative exception is subject to peer review before the system is finalized and becomes "active", and might not survive the peer review process. In any case, that exception would not apply to the former CA 91 west of Vermont Ave. which is not only officially excluded from the state system, but state law does not require whatever route signage exists.

CA 130 is a different story, which is legislatively authorized to exist east of Mt. Hamilton, but Caltrans never built and does not maintain or treat as part of the state system the road east of Mt. Hamilton, which is county-maintained (I'm on the road right now, my info is incomplete at the moment).

[Duke87]

Chiming in on the subject of relinquishments:

It is fairly common in the northeast to have sections of state routes (and sometimes entire lengths of state routes!) that are maintained by municipal or county governments. The responsible entity sometimes does not put up signs where there really should be signs (see: New Brunswick, NJ)... and sometimes puts up glaringly nonstandard signs (see: Woonsocket, RI).

No routes have been cut up in the HB due to this, though. Nor should they be - these segments that are not state maintained are still officially part of the routes in question and (usually) signed as such to some degree.

It seems to me that California's relinquished segments are functionally the same thing, even if the legalese behind them is slightly different - a section of a state route which is maintained by a county of municipal government. That is what the legal obligation for the responsible entity to post signs entails. I would not go chopping up routes over this, it is both nonsensical from a network perspective and inconsistent with what we have previously done in other states.


As for Florida, whether chopping routes up is correct would depend on whether there is a legal obligation or expectation that the entity responsible for maintaining the non-state segment should post state route shields (I'm not familiar enough with the legal situation there to really say).

[neroute2]

No routes have been cut up in the HB due to this, though. Nor should they be - these segments that are not state maintained are still officially part of the routes in question and (usually) signed as such to some degree.

To be fair, the legislative definition of SR 91 begins at Vermont (just west of I-110) with no mention of the continuation to SR 1, now that it's all been relinquished. But signs have not been removed by the cities or Caltrans (on intersecting routes).

If we were going to get into the same level of officialness with I-80, we'd begin it at the former Embarcadero Freeway ramps, with SR 80 continuing west to US 101. The Central Skyway was removed from the Interstate system in 1965 or 1968 and remains that way according to FHWA.

[Bickendan]

CA 99's exits are inconsistent when they overlap:
Southernmost point uses Route(Exit); the Sacramento portion uses Exit(Route).

[oscar]

CA 99's exits are inconsistent when they overlap:
Southernmost point uses Route(Exit); the Sacramento portion uses Exit(Route).

Yeah, I need to make things consistent on all California routes, including the ones in active systems. I blow hot and cold on whether to stick with Route(Exit), or move everything to Exit(Route).

[yakra]

I blow hot and cold on whether to stick with Route(Exit), or move everything to Exit(Route).

Is a given route otherwise an exit-numbered route?
For example,
NH11 has I-89(12) and I-89(11)
NH101 has 6(93) and 7(93)

[Bickendan]

Do we even have a consistent rule about this?
At the very least, my main gripe about Exit(Route) in its current iteration is that it's a bit vague because the route qualifier's omitted.
To use CA 99 as an example -- 6(50) and 522(5) -- are fairly obvious to us and to those who know California. But for less versed travelers, I think that's confusing, where the Route(Exit) format is more clear [US50(6) and I-5(522)], particularly in states or regions where number duplication aren't uncommon (127(69), to pull a number from the ether -- is that TX 69, US 69, or I-69... or CR/FM/RM 69?!). If the Exit(Route) format were adopted, the qualifiers should be there [6(US 50) and 522(I-5)]; however, that implies that the dominant route (I-5 and US 50) are 'subservient' to CA 99 in this case.
I think ultimately this highlights the strength of the Route(Exit) format -- the route qualifiers have been built in by default, and it shows the dominant route and its exit number on the particular tags.