usaush: United States Historic US Routes

[si404]

put it on a shelf to be revisited once we have the ability for users to toggle systems on and off in their stats.

That seems a sensible idea. And, tbh, the difference between active and active+preview works as such a toggle in most states - only 4 states currently have preview systems (AL, CA, LA, NY) and there aren't a huge number left to make (some secondary systems, usams).

Ditching it entirely seems a bit excessive.

[osu-lsu]

It seems to me, from reading responses on here, that other than for US66, Historic US routes are more community driven than some state sanctioned body. We all know what US 19, or US 281, or SR (insert your state of choice) 37 is. They are easily identifiable on any map, paper or digital. Historic US routes are not easily identifiable in the field, rarely shown on maps, and end up overlapping most existing routes.
Thus a debate, for the travel mapping community, that has not been solved, and most likely will not come to a conclusion (unless the operation of "Historic US Routes" changes among state and federal DOTs)

[cl94]

I'm in agreement with most of the people on here. Former US 66 deserves to be on the site, but most of the others...aren't really a thing yet and, in many cases, just overlap the modern road (cough...Historic US 20 in OH and NY). In some states, Ex-66 is signed as well as (if not better than) state routes and with how many people explicitly seek out 66 (both in and out of the road enthusiast community), having it on the site is beneficial.

Possible solution: maybe throw US 66 into a future "national scenic byways" system (similar to the European Tourist Routes) if we ever get around to doing that? Such a system would, by its nature, include several historic highways, such as the National Road and Lincoln Highway, which ARE well-signed and sought out. The national scenic byway system has a decent amount of deviation from the state highway system in some states,

[the_spui_ninja]

I'm in agreement with most of the people on here. Former US 66 deserves to be on the site, but most of the others...aren't really a thing yet and, in many cases, just overlap the modern road (cough...Historic US 20 in OH and NY). In some states, Ex-66 is signed as well as (if not better than) state routes and with how many people explicitly seek out 66 (both in and out of the road enthusiast community), having it on the site is beneficial.

Yeah, US 66 is actually signed at junctions too, which helps with finding it. For example, I had no idea where the routing of historic US 6 in Gretna NE was driving from current US 6, and had to cross-check Google Maps with the HB just to make sure I did it right. Stuff like the historic US 20 sections in Nebraska and the one sign I found by Lusk probably shouldn't be in it anyway.

[si404]

I'm in agreement with most of the people on here. Former US 66 deserves to be on the site, but most of the others...aren't really a thing yet and, in many cases, just overlap the modern road (cough...Historic US 20 in OH and NY). In some states, Ex-66 is signed as well as (if not better than) state routes and with how many people explicitly seek out 66 (both in and out of the road enthusiast community), having it on the site is beneficial.

66 is where it started. The big problem is US20 which is very haphazard. The others are somewhere on the spectrum.

I did look at NSB, and it's a similar situation - some stuff well signed, other stuff not so much. Most in the middle.

[oscar]

California has some historic US routes that are mostly well-signed, by local associations that take care of the signage even though there is no state role since the historic routes are mostly on mileage removed from the Caltrans-maintained highway system.

Aside from Historic US 66, there's Historic US 6 (in Los Angeles County, the shorter part in Kern County is last I checked unsigned), and Historic US 99 (a new local association is devoted to the part through the mountains north of Los Angeles). Historic US 40 is generally well signed. Maybe Historic US 80 and US 395 as well. And all of these routes are mostly non-concurrent with state-maintained routes in the HB.

I would not be as bearish as some others about keeping usaush around in some form, even though I'm not into historic routes. I also don't put much effort into clinching them, even in states like California where I've clinched most everything else in the HB. I am not bothered by historic and other routes showing up as unclinched on my maps.

[vdeane]

put it on a shelf to be revisited once we have the ability for users to toggle systems on and off in their stats.

That seems a sensible idea. And, tbh, the difference between active and active+preview works as such a toggle in most states - only 4 states currently have preview systems (AL, CA, LA, NY) and there aren't a huge number left to make (some secondary systems, usams).

Ditching it entirely seems a bit excessive.

It's worth noting that, while it does differentiate stats, it does not do the same for maps.

[si404]

If I'm not mistaken there's a filter that does active only that just doesn't get used.

[cl94]

The toggle thing we have thrown around for a while would solve a bunch of other issues/disagreements we have here, most notably unsigned routes. I don't know how much coding that would require to make happen (nor do I have the time/expertise to play around with it), but it would take care of the issue of historic routes by just letting people eliminate it from their map if they only care about clinching certain things. I'd frankly like to expand this to ALL systems so people can easily turn things on/off to help prioritize classes of routes in their planning (i.e. to focus on higher-level routes outside of home region), but let's not get ahead of ourselves. It seems like it would be something we could do pretty easily by putting a flag on line entries, but I'll leave that to the computer people.

[michih]

If I'm not mistaken there's a filter that does active only that just doesn't get used.

I'm not aware of a active / active+preview filter in mapview. Not even a Github issue. There was an idea of improved stats restriction.

[Jim]

If I'm not mistaken there's a filter that does active only that just doesn't get used.

I'm not aware of a active / active+preview filter in mapview. Not even a Github issue. There was an idea of improved stats restriction.

That functionality does not exist now, but I've now created a GitHub Issue for it: https://github.com/TravelMapping/Web/issues/575

I'm willing to add it if it's something people would find useful.  Other than the time to get it implemented, the only downside I see is a little more clutter in the controls at the top.

[michih]

the only downside I see is a little more clutter in the controls at the top.

"Mark Current Location" could go into a tooltip in truncated to MCLin the control section.
"Always update Visible Routes" could be Update and full text in tooltip.

see https://github.com/TravelMapping/Web/issues/575#issuecomment-753322115


But this detail discussion does not belong to the usaush thread. It is OT here.

[SSOWorld]

put it on a shelf to be revisited once we have the ability for users to toggle systems on and off in their stats.

That seems a sensible idea. And, tbh, the difference between active and active+preview works as such a toggle in most states - only 4 states currently have preview systems (AL, CA, LA, NY) and there aren't a huge number left to make (some secondary systems, usams).

Ditching it entirely seems a bit excessive.

All 4 of the previews have sat untouched for years (Oscar's battling jurisdiction issues in CA, the Parkways ought to be ready now in NY, but are suffering from debates about where a couple routes that cross into Jersey go, with the number of routes being held for field checks and other, LA could be a while, AL is due to froggie's waiting for it's peer review (which is/was pushing back MS - which also has the 7xx+ routes and whether they should be added.)  There are also "da rules" which many of you are still adhering to that came from CHM.

I would not favor turning off "Preview" due to the lengthy delays going on but I will not be mad if it is because this is due to the systems being in flux and not confirmed as this set will be in preview for quite some time for that very reason. 

As such, having the off-switch is better than nothing.

As for this system, US-66 got enough attention in some states that it certainly deserves a look - because of its history.  It belongs more with routes that have history or tourist value (again debatable for the other historic US Routes) such as Lincoln Highway, Lewis and Clark Trail, Great River Road, Dixie Highway, etc.  There are so many it will taake time to track all of them down.  This would be more of a "Tourist Routes" system.

[oscar]

All 4 of the previews have sat untouched for years (Oscar's battling jurisdiction issues in CA, the Parkways ought to be ready now in NY, but are suffering from debates about where a couple routes that cross into Jersey go, with the number of routes being held for field checks and other, LA could be a while, AL is due to froggie's waiting for it's peer review (which is/was pushing back MS - which also has the 7xx+ routes and whether they should be added.)

usaca has been peer reviewed (your recent comment on CA 73 was also on neroute2's long review list). Problem was that happened at the same time canqc was peer reviewed. I chose finishing up canqc as my 2020 lockdown project. I was busy on the road after canqc was activated, and I was let out of my cage. Now that travel season is pretty much over for me (mainly bad weather and limited daylight), I'll have time to get back to work on usaca.

[yakra]

I think grab-bag systems are a plague and should be avoided as such.

WRT usaush specifically, osu-lsu sums up my thoughts well.

We all know what US 19, or US 281, or SR (insert your state of choice) 37 is. They are easily identifiable on any map, paper or digital. Historic US routes are not easily identifiable in the field, rarely shown on maps

How the heck do we define them? We essentially have to rely on field signage, which is of wildly varying quality, and often close to non-existent.
For example some of the routes in Nebraska i believe have only one sign on them. No other dots to connect to; no segments, only points.