Description
The U.S. Census Bureau maintains WMS endpoints for all of the layers in TIGER. We’ve imported most of these layers in the past, but automatic conflation is impractical, so in general, no one has bothered with upkeep. The one bright exception has been roads, thanks to the work @iandees has done every year to build a TIGER Roads overlay (e.g., in #2157), but the other layers could also be useful too.
Anything from TIGER comes with a caveat emptor about geometric accuracy and to some extent spelling as well, but that’s nothing new for this project. These layers are only used for reference, not direct imports.
Physical features
This MapServer contains roads, road labels, some route shields, railroad tracks, waterways and waterbodies, and water labels. If you squint hard enough, it also has national parks, colleges and universities, and prisons. This should definitely be an overlay so that you can make out the labels against something other than a black background.
https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/arcgis/rest/services/TIGERweb/tigerWMS_PhysicalFeatures/MapServer/export?dpi=96&transparent=true&format=png32&layers=show%3A1%2C2%2C3%2C4%2C5%2C6%2C7%2C8%2C10%2C11%2C12%2C13%2C14%2C15%2C17%2C18%2C19%2C20%2C21%2C22%2C23%2C24&bbox={bbox}&bboxSR={proj}&imageSR=102100&size={width},{height}&f=image
Compared to the existing TIGER Roads overlay, this overlay would not highlight features that are missing from OSM. It also loads more slowly than the Mapbox-hosted tiles, though still faster than a great many of the aerial imagery layers we index.
Boundaries
This MapServer contains boundaries from the latest Boundary and Annexation Survey (the beginning of the current year). It contains a number of layers that would be difficult to interpret if we include them all, especially since there’s no legend. We might need to consult the community for a definitive list of the layers to enable. This glossary is helpful for understanding the various designations.
As a starting point, I tried to select only the layers corresponding to boundaries that we map as either boundary=administrative or boundary=census, so I disabled anything related to special districts (school districts and Alaska Native corporation regions), legislative districts, property ownership (such as off-reservation trust lands). I enabled CDPs because we can map them as boundary=census, but I disabled every other kind of census-designated boundary, including census county divisions, because they don’t correspond to a recognizable locality.
https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/arcgis/rest/services/TIGERweb/tigerWMS_Current/MapServer/export?dpi=96&transparent=true&format=png32&layers=show:20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,34,35,36,37,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,80,81,82,83&bbox={bbox}&bboxSR={proj}&imageSR=102100&size={width},{height}&f=image
We can probably safely reuse most of the metadata and geometry from the existing TIGER Roads overlays.