Simplify Kentucky parkway shields

[1ec5]

Revision 185 introduced a one-off shield for each parkway in the Kentucky parkway system that depicts the signs without the Unbridled Spirit branding but with the fully spelled-out road name that ends up being unreadable at the sizes that this renderer uses. These shields would be much more discernible as the same design but with an initialism of the road name, which can be displayed in larger type. For example, the Bluegrass Parkway would be “BG”, and the Western Kentucky Parkway would be “WK”. I’ve tagged each parkway’s route relation with short_name set to the two-letter initialism that the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet uses for official purposes. This renderer could refactor the various US:KY:Parkway-*.svg files as a single file that contains a variable like the templates for other route networks.

[kennykb]

This project didn't ever actually adopt those particular graphics. I agree that they were unreadable.

How likely is a driver to recognize the abbreviations? I always have seen signs that incorporate these designs as being, in essence, noncompliant D3-1, D3-1a, D3-2 (or whatever) signs; signs giving the highway name in a nonstandard font and color scheme and adding whatever graphics that the individual DOT's have dreamt up. Would having this sort of shield (which doesn't actually resemble the sign all that much) actually help with navigation?

[1ec5]

Kentucky tried organizing their various parkway logos into a coherent system, but in my opinion it completely fails in terms of usability compared to the old logos. The only reason it doesn’t cause more confusion is that no two parkways are very close to each other.

In turn-by-turn navigation UI, it would be far better to display the road name without a shield. A verbatim parkway shield would just be illegible and distracting, while one that relies on abbreviations might be puzzling in a few cases. For example, the Purchase Parkway is abbreviated “JC” after the initials of its official namesake, Julian M. Carroll, whose name is emblazoned in small type at the top of the actual shield.

For maps used for trip planning or casual browsing, the calculus is a bit different, because shields on the map don’t need to faithfully reproduce road signs. The Kentucky parkways are prominent highways, every bit as much as Interstate highways, yet they tend to get short shrift in cartography because of their poorly designed shields. I think it would help to label the parkways with something, to acknowledge that they’re part of a route. It’s important that the shields be distinctive from other routes and from each other; whether they resemble signs is less important.

In other states with more reasonable signage practices, a well-recognized shield such as that of the New Jersey Turnpike would complement a road name in a UI, and a simplified version would be right at home on a map. Some states have pretty good systems of shields for named roads, like the lettered Long Island parkways or the North Texas tollways (whose guide sign shields say simply “DNT”, “PGBT”, or “SRT” inside a blue rectangle).