I’m currently in the process of tagging historical highways in Venango County. Unfortunately, there’s no online database or public PennDOT sources for old legislative routes in Pennsylvania other than historical County Type 10 maps. I will attempt to use this diary to create a listing of old legislative routes and their modern LRS equivalents within Venango County as I add the appropriate old_ref:legislative tags to OpenStreetMap and add the road to Open Historical Map.

History and Description

Legislative routes were formed from the Sproul Road Bill in 1911 and existed until 1987 when the current location referencing system became in use.

Database

City of Meadville, Vernon Twp, West Mead Twp

##Completed## • Landuse has been filled in on the map. • Buildings have been added using RapID. • Roads have been updated with ref:penndot and unsigned_ref tags.

Work in Progress

• Addresses are a work in progress and is a very time consuming task. • Business POIs.

When I first started mapping this area, there was very little mapped. Allegheny College, retail centers, and a few other isolated areas were the mapped exception. It’s been a fulfilling opportunity to map undermapped communities, especially in the Appalachia region.

Along Pennsylvania’s freeways, there are emergency detour routes that allows travelers to bypass traffic accidents, inclement weather, and other road closures. Colors commonly used are black, blue, green, orange, and red. The detours are perhaps one of the least mapped features across Pennsylvania.

The best sources to consult are street-level photos from Mapillary and Bing Maps to establish which highways the particular route follows. I also recommend having a map nearby and to use colored pencils to mark the detour on the map.

Tagging the colored detours is quite easy using iD. Simply create a new Relation -> Route Features -> Detour Route.

Under Name, type in the name to be used, for example Orange Detour (I 79 Exits 121-130). Colors are used multiple times, so it is necessary to differentiate between them by including the ref for the highway being detoured and also the exit numbers that are being bypassed.

The Route Number in this case is Orange.

Because these detours are bidirectional, the from and to tags aren’t necessary.

The Colour tag would be orange.

Since I-79 is being detoured in this example, the Detour tag would be I 79.

Don’t forget to tag the directional role of the relation if the road being tagged is one way.

To make tagging easier, consult the OSM Wiki under the Detour page.

I have also published a YouTube video showing the best way of how to tag the relation.

I hope y’all find the resources helpful for adding the emergency detour routes across Pennsylvania.