The Great C Road hunt!

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crowntown100
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by crowntown100 »

crowntown100 wrote:So, I've found a load of road work schedules for Cornwall Council roads, which includes plenty of 'C' and 'U' roads. So, I thought, I know what I can do. Ten minutes of hunting around the Council website for FOI requests on C and U road classifications in Cornwall. Let's see what they come back with!
You know sometimes you think to yourself "Why did I do that?"

May I introduce you all to the Cornwall Council Interactive Map. It's a great thing. I've managed to find many people's houses using it and has come in handy quite often.

If you go to Layers and select Transportation> Road Network (you have to open the sub menu and wait for it to load and allow you to select it) you are presented with every C and U road in Cornwall, as well as every footpath and cyclepath number (although I am yet to find a cyclepath number).

Interestingly, U-Roads come in groups of apparently random sizing, but all seem to be numbered in the format U6XXX. Areas around the north and east of Helston are all numbered U6026. Footpaths in the area will take the same last three digits of the road area, but have the F7XXX format. So, for the same area north of Helston, footpaths are numbered F7026. U-Road classification groups appear to increase from west to east. There does not appear to be a similar system for C-Roads. I'm not sure how I'm going to describe this on the Wiki, though. I'm also not sure whether it is feasible to create pages for every U-Road in Cornwall as nearly every road is classified and there are so many duplications due to the groupings. I expect that I will leave it, writing something that is appropriate like what I wrote above on the Cornwall Council page of the wiki.

Plenty of work to do now!
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c2R
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by c2R »

Cheers Harry - yes, I'd seen their map, but when I tried it the clicking to get further details wasn't working - so I was clicking on the yellow roads and nothing was happening. Tried again today and low and behold, the numbers are there, just as you say! I've recategorised them on the https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ind ... _Road_Hunt
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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crowntown100 wrote:I'm also not sure whether it is feasible to create pages for every U-Road in Cornwall as nearly every road is classified and there are so many duplications due to the groupings. I expect that I will leave it, writing something that is appropriate like what I wrote above on the Cornwall Council page of the wiki.
It sounds like Cornwall Council number absolutely everything - and only the "C" numbered roads are actually Class III and hence get their own page. The others are all unclassified roads, and so don't get a page. There's a few other councils that do something similar.
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by Euan »

I will shortly start adding the Northern Ireland C roads to the wiki. In case anyone is interested, here is another link to the NI class III road list from upthread:

https://www.infrastructure-ni.gov.uk/si ... ctions.pdf

Although the highest number on this list is C711, I have identified gaps in the numbering which probably brings the total to somewhere between 500-600 roads. Most of the articles will probably just be simple descriptions of the route, so as always it would be a good idea for anyone local to add further information where they see fit.
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by Euan »

Also, I should say that I do not have any pictures of the roads myself and so it will be up to others to add pictures to the wiki pages.
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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Euan wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 06:10 Also, I should say that I do not have any pictures of the roads myself and so it will be up to others to add pictures to the wiki pages.
Did you know that you can get the photos from Geograph?

If you go to : http://www.geograph.org.uk/browser/#!/display=map_dots then you can zoom to the area of your road and any images will be shown with a dot. Then switch to map - thumbnails and you'll see thumbnails of the images. If you can see one appropriate to the road, then click on it and it will open, e.g. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3260541

This URL can be directly pasted into the file upload screen and the metadata scraped from Geograph.

I found doing this (coupled with taking my own photos when I was in an area) broke up the monotony of simply creating stub pages!
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by Euan »

c2R wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 08:40
Euan wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 06:10 Also, I should say that I do not have any pictures of the roads myself and so it will be up to others to add pictures to the wiki pages.
Did you know that you can get the photos from Geograph?

If you go to : http://www.geograph.org.uk/browser/#!/display=map_dots then you can zoom to the area of your road and any images will be shown with a dot. Then switch to map - thumbnails and you'll see thumbnails of the images. If you can see one appropriate to the road, then click on it and it will open, e.g. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3260541

This URL can be directly pasted into the file upload screen and the metadata scraped from Geograph.

I found doing this (coupled with taking my own photos when I was in an area) broke up the monotony of simply creating stub pages!
That will be useful, thanks. There wouldn't be any issues with copyright if did use some of the photos, would there?
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by c2R »

Euan wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 17:02
c2R wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 08:40
Euan wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 06:10 Also, I should say that I do not have any pictures of the roads myself and so it will be up to others to add pictures to the wiki pages.
Did you know that you can get the photos from Geograph?

If you go to : http://www.geograph.org.uk/browser/#!/display=map_dots then you can zoom to the area of your road and any images will be shown with a dot. Then switch to map - thumbnails and you'll see thumbnails of the images. If you can see one appropriate to the road, then click on it and it will open, e.g. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3260541

This URL can be directly pasted into the file upload screen and the metadata scraped from Geograph.

I found doing this (coupled with taking my own photos when I was in an area) broke up the monotony of simply creating stub pages!
That will be useful, thanks. There wouldn't be any issues with copyright if did use some of the photos, would there?
No issues, they use a compatible open licence, and our scraper thing automatically populates the required attribution.

You can also learn how to do SABREMaps traces, if you're interested?

Enjoy!
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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c2R wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 18:30 You can also learn how to do SABREMaps traces, if you're interested?
Yes I've been tracing over the routes that I've covered so far. Some of the routes are in detached sections and need multiple traces. Can traces be deleted once they have been sketched out? It's just that I have been doing some test traces to see how it works.
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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Euan wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 20:09
c2R wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 18:30 You can also learn how to do SABREMaps traces, if you're interested?
Yes I've been tracing over the routes that I've covered so far. Some of the routes are in detached sections and need multiple traces. Can traces be deleted once they have been sketched out? It's just that I have been doing some test traces to see how it works.
You can't unfortunately delete the traces once you've created them; if you save them with the same name though, it will overwrite the previous trace.

You can add multiple parameters to the SABREMap tag, so for the C10 (Hertfordshire), I did the following:

|sabremap = <sabremap lat=51.988048 lon=-0.079931 zoom=9 trace=user/c2R/C10_South_Hertfordshire.osm;user/c2R/C10_FarWest_Hertfordshire.osm;user/c2R/C10_West_Hertfordshire.osm;user/c2R/C10_NearWest_Hertfordshire.osm;user/c2R/C10_Central_Hertfordshire.osm;user/c2R/C10_NearEast_Hertfordshire.osm;user/c2R/C10_East_Hertfordshire.osm; />

This URL will give you the list of all traces and lengths of each trace in km.
https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/osmtraces/list.php

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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by Euan »

Upon closer inspection of the NI C road list there are several large gaps of unused numbers, the first of which I have now reached (C112-C150). Some further analysis of the numbering has been done before on this very old thread from 16 years ago (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5413). Taking this into account my thoughts are that the class III numbers are ordered by the six traditional counties with the county sequence being in alphabetical order (using Londonderry), so the counties should be covered in the following order:
Antrim -> Armagh -> Down -> Fermanagh -> Londonderry/Derry -> Tyrone. The gaps in the numbering will be unused numbers that have been allocated to a particular county, so for example C1-C150 would have been allocated to County Antrim with C112-C150 being left unused.

Looking at County Antrim in particular, there seems to be a geographical sequence in place which follows roughly something like this:
Image
The distribution of the numbers can therefore be broken down into rough groups as follows:
:arrow: C1 - C8 - Lisburn/Lagan Valley
:arrow: C9 - C30 - East Lough Neagh/Airport
:arrow: C31 - C45 - Newtownabbey/Ballyclare/Antrim
:arrow: C46 - C68 - North Lough Neagh/Ballymena
:arrow: C69 - C78 - Larne/Carrickfergus
:arrow: C79 - C87 - The Glens/Ballycastle
:arrow: C88 - C102 - Ballymoney/Portrush/Causeway Coast
:arrow: C103 - C111 - mixed
All of these numbers are in use except C1 and C98 which have never been used and C30 which is now defunct. Numbers from C103 onwards were probably added later on, with the main sequence ending on C102.

On a side note, I have noticed that many of the NI C roads that I have covered so far are quite lengthy and can cover multiple roads (forming T shapes or Y shapes), a bit different to what I have seen amongst C roads in England or in Scotland.

Armagh is next... and hopefully now that I am a bit less overbooked outside of SABRE it will not take too long to cover the next batch of roads.
Last edited by Euan on Fri Oct 11, 2019 08:33, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by c2R »

Very interesting - do any of them cross the county border that you've found so far, or are they all within the county?
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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c2R wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 08:28 Very interesting - do any of them cross the county border that you've found so far, or are they all within the county?
Some of them do leave the county, but they are all at least partially within the boundaries. There might even be some roads from other counties which cross into County Antrim that I have not covered yet, but to what extent this is the case I will not know until later on. What I am aware of is that there are a few C7xx roads in Belfast (both on the Antrim and the Down sides) towards the end of the NI-wide numbering sequence that are clearly separate from any of the county specific groups.
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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Euan wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 08:25On a side note, I have noticed that many of the NI C roads that I have covered so far are quite lengthy and can cover multiple roads (forming T shapes or Y shapes), a bit different to what I have seen amongst C roads in England or in Scotland.
Just like A- and B-roads in NI. :)
Euan wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 08:46What I am aware of is that there are a few C7xx roads in Belfast (both on the Antrim and the Down sides) towards the end of the NI-wide numbering sequence that are clearly separate from any of the county specific groups.
A- and B-roads in NI were originally defined almost separately by the 6 counties and 2 county boroughs (Belfast and Londonderry). If C-roads are the same (and I'd assume that they would be) then it's not surprising that Belfast doesn't fall under the County Antrim sequence; they'd come numerically after County Tyrone.
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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c2R wrote: Thu Jan 04, 2018 14:55 ...and if anyone else (even if you've never written anything on the wiki before) is interested in picking a local authority and having a go, we can help with where to start and what to do (and even do the 'difficult' bit of setting up the initial template and gallery page for you).

You don't even necessarily have to know the local authority you pick, although of course that is an advantage for fleshing out the content.
I've added a couple of Staffordshire's (C119 and C276). I can't find a list to work methodically through, but they are all mapped on https://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/transp ... earch.aspx
What's this for?

From the SABRE Wiki: C119 %28Staffordshire%29 :


Staffordshire County Council's locally classified C119 consists of Keele Road and Station Road through the village of Keele, and Three Mile Lane from Keele village to the A53 in Whitmore, in the Newcastle-under-Lyme area of Staffordshire. It also provides the service access to Keele services.

Station Road and Keele Road form a U shaped road through Keele (both ending on the A525, which by-passes the

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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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nickoli wrote: Sat Jan 05, 2019 13:12 I've added a couple of Staffordshire's (C119 and C276). I can't find a list to work methodically through, but they are all mapped on https://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/transp ... earch.aspx

Thanks for that - I've done a few in the south of the council area, but adding them from the north is really great!

I've just made a couple of small changes: added the type to class3 so that it does all the cleverness in showing up in Staffordshire_Council_(Class_III_roads) (the authority list) and C119 (the like-numbered list); and I've added all the standard templates.

As for the full list, I've not seen one, just the map that you've linked to.
Last edited by Steven on Sat Jan 05, 2019 21:03, edited 1 time in total.
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From the SABRE Wiki: C119 %28Staffordshire%29 :


Staffordshire County Council's locally classified C119 consists of Keele Road and Station Road through the village of Keele, and Three Mile Lane from Keele village to the A53 in Whitmore, in the Newcastle-under-Lyme area of Staffordshire. It also provides the service access to Keele services.

Station Road and Keele Road form a U shaped road through Keele (both ending on the A525, which by-passes the

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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by Truvelo »

That map shows most newly built roads as orange/green striped. Certainly round here most roads built within the last few years are that colour. Maybe the designation hasn't been determined yet.
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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Steven wrote: Sat Jan 05, 2019 14:32
I've just made a couple of small changes: added the type to class3 so that it does all the cleverness in showing up in https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ind ... III_roads) (the authority list) and C119 (the like-numbered list); and I've added all the standard templates.
I wondered why they hadn't showed up, thanks.
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From the SABRE Wiki: https :
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

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Steven wrote: Sat Jan 05, 2019 14:32 As for the full list, I've not seen one, just the map that you've linked to.
To be honest I think in any case the map is sufficient on its own. For certain it is much easier and less time consuming to look at the roads on a map rather than looking through massive lists with various different formats. I have been referring to a lengthy list while working on the Northern Ireland C roads and it is sometimes a bit tricky trying to match them up to roads on OpenStreetMap, especially when the descriptions reference other C roads which you also have to try and find and remember in the process. Luckily the page search option makes it easier to find numbers in lists, but it only really helps once you are certain which numbers are actually present (in the case of NI, they are fairly predictable). Authorities that have maps of their class III roads are by far the easiest ones to do and I do wish that more authorities presented them in this way.
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Re: The Great C Road hunt!

Post by Steven »

Something has just come up on another thread:
Jayck wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 14:14 So I've found this page on the Highways England website: http://tris.highwaysengland.co.uk/detai ... icflowdata
Now, the data all by itself is interesting, but what jumped out at me was that there are seven Class III roads listed within the HE data - C993 to C999. Are these actually Trunk Class III roads? It seems quite unlikely.

There's also a B road listed, B5306 as "link between A595 and A597" but there's also a grid reference given for the data gathering point (300198:522395), which is pretty much in the middle of the route.

Curiouser and curiouser...
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