Names of service roads and interchanges

Communities India
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I noticed recently a lot of service roads went from having no name to name=Service Road, which got me thinking - what should they be named? “Service Road” is a descriptive name, it is not the name of the road itself. Internationally, frontage roads do not appear to be all that common, at least not as common as India, but wherever they do exist, the frontage roads seem to have the same name as the main carriageway, with loc_name having service road. E.g. The main road and frontage road will have name=Example Road, while the frontage road will have loc_name=Example Road Service Road. Some practical examples: I 35 in Texax: Way: ‪Interstate 35 South‬ (‪1053820396‬) | OpenStreetMap

The other scheme: not having a name at all. This is also an option, but it causes problems with navigation, since many Indian roads require you to first merge with the service road to interchange with another road. One option to resolve this could be having routers call out “Merge with the service road” whenever they see the next road has frontage_road=yes.

The same problem exists on interchanges, many of which have now been tagged with name=flyoverWay: ‪Flyover‬ (‪30213110‬) | OpenStreetMap

I think instead of using incorrect name tags, it might be more helpful to fill in destination, destionation:street and destination:refon interchange loops. Thoughts?

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Are there signs showing the name of these service/frontage roads? That would make it easy.

In the places that have frontage roads near me, the frontage road either takes the name of the main road or it takes the name of the main road with “frontage road” added as a suffix. In both cases, there are signs posted with the name which makes it easy: Just use the name on the sign(s). An example with the “frontage road” suffix can be seen at OpenStreetMap and an example where the service road takes the same name can be seen at OpenStreetMap

If there are no signs the I think the rule would be that the service roads are unnamed. But if local convention and/or delivery addresses lean towards using the main road’s name or main road’s name with a “frontage road” suffix then I would use the local convention. The main reason to use local convention would be to allow generic routing and guidance apps to work well.

In any case, I think putting name=”service road” into the name field of a highway=service road when there are no signs indicating actual name is poor form.

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For most service roads, no, there wouldn’t be signs indicating a name

Delivery addresses tend to mix between using the same name as the main road or using “main road service road” or something along those lines.

Agreed, that was the main reason for starting this discussion

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From this wiki page, frontage_road=yes would communicate that it’s a frontage road, making name=Service Road unnecessary unless it’s specifically known by that name.

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“frontage_road”, definitively ‘international’ English which will find great pickup outside of the NA ;-). Wonder what the registered addresses are of residences and businesses who’s access is solely via such roads. Those could help to find a proper name for such ways to insert.

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We lack a formal addressing system here. Addresses are aimply subjective descriptions of the location. Two businesses in the same building may have written down different things as their addresses

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those look very very suspicious - though I am not sure enough to fix them remotely from another continent

this does not look likely or plausible to fulfill Names - OpenStreetMap Wiki

I opened Note: 5132450 | OpenStreetMap

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Maybe you’ve tried already, but the adder of the first “descriptive name” you linked to is still active in OSM, and commenting on a changeset might get a response.

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also added now