I’m currently doing some edits in and around Weatherford, TX. IH20 runs through Weatherford. There is a frontage/service road along most of IH20 (both sides). I see it is named either west or east, depending on whether it is west or east of S. Main St (Way: South Main Street (781164604) | OpenStreetMap). At first I was very confused by this, as I thought the name should indicate direction of travel, especially on an Interstate Highway. But now I realize the name is based its relationship to Main St., which runs north and south.
Is this the OSM convention? I would have thought all frontage roads north of IH20 would be named west (bound), and all frontage roads south of IH20 would be named east (bound).
Is this not the (naming) convention, or am I over thinking this?
When a street name has a directional prefix or suffix, that typically corresponds to the adjoining addresses, not the direction of travel. As far as I’m aware, feeder roads in Texas are treated no differently from other surface streets in terms of addressing. If Main Street is the dividing line for East and West addresses in Weatherford, then I-20 should follow suit.
To add to this, the name=* tag is the name of the street, even if it’s named after a highway. You can contrast what happens in a city that doesn’t put quadrant directionals on city streets: the frontage roads don’t have cardinal directions in their names at all. If you want to indicate that the frontage road leads to westbound Interstate Highway 20 based on the route markers, use destination:ref=I 20 West.[1]
Previous discussion:
The use of I instead of IH is another sticky subject that could easily be its own thread. ↩︎