JOSM
JOSM #21966 - Allow cardinal directions as roles in road routes.
The wiki page for route relations states:
In Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, the a role set to a cardinal direction indicates which of the route's official route directions the way carries when the route is mapped as a single bidirectional relation.
This fixes the erroneous warnings that are issued when modifying road relations mapped in this style.
Here’s more detail about the mapping style that this PR would accommodate. It’s one of two styles in wide use, though the PTv2-style directional subrelations are more rigorous and already supported by JOSM. A similar change was previously discussed on the josm-dev mailing list back in 2013.
I do recognize the superiorities of using one relation for each direction, but with the prevalence of this mapping style, I feel that JOSM should at least recognize it as valid. Having warnings that are "safe to dismiss" like this desensitizes mappers to legitimate warnings.
If we want to formally deprecate this style, then I think JOSM should give warnings about it. But until then I think it should allow it.
No argument there, just trying to give context about why perhaps there hadn’t been motion on this change since it was first discussed back in 2013.