Good question. Why are we putting roads into relations? I'm just doing
it because everyone else is.

I'm not sure myself.   Possibilities are:

1. Hint to routers for good path to follow over long distances without searching all roads. In practice, the latest highly optimized routing algorithms probably don't need this; they do better by looking at road type, maxspeed, etc. 2. High level view of roads on map at low zoom number levels. In practice, some guys implementing low number zoom views won't touch route relations because they're for routing. 3. Hint to GPS turn by turn instructions to know that multiple "ways" make up the same route, despite having different names / refs, thus avoiding needless chat like "Continue straight across the Hoffman Bridge, then continue straight on route 45..." when it's all part route 45.




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