Station and offset or bearing and distance

In Oregon the right of way descriptions are (almost) all written in station/offset terms. So that would be my preference on any mapping. ODOT has been pretty good about documenting its standard legal description and deed format.   

How bad do they "not" match?

Sometimes 30-40 feet.  And over the years, the official method to place right-of-way markers changed from being 12" inside the right of way to 9" to all of the monument being just within the right-of-way to more recently having an aluminum disc in concrete at the correct location.  Except for the recent stuff, they have historically been set with a lot of slop.  So I can't count on the plans and I can't count on the monuments.

Whenever I've used highway plans I've started with the centerline alignment.  I haven't run into a case where that alignment somehow didn't match stations and offsets.  I usually compare that record data to found monuments.

I hear Idaho has a history of poorly placed right of way monuments and maybe I'm just lucky, but the right of way monuments I've found on my projects so far have fit the record reasonably well.  If they didn't though I'd most likely hold the monuments since it's likely landowners have been recognizing them as marking the boundary.

If the dot accidentally shorted themselves, well, I think they can just cough up the money to do another right of way take.

Outs yes, Stations no, Deeds yes, Plans no.

Lots of "it depends" for those rules of thumb pertaining to highway plans. Like RR's, older highway plans will often hold well with tangents, but stationing is usually the weak part: And plans; they often don't match with deeds. 

It's a case by case basis.

Look at everything, try and hold monuments until you can't, but I seldom rely on stations. 

Around here, I can't speak for other places in the country, you'll have a project centerline, which sometimes coincides with the ROW centerline, but most of the time they aren't the same and can be only a few tenths apart. Our DOT typically doesn't usually hold private monuments along the ROW and occasionally not even their own stating they were set by contractors. So what I'm accustomed to seeing is a ROW limit typically reference by station and offset to the project centerline, that may or may not fit with the recovered monuments. Talking to DOT surveyors they'll say the private surveyors that set those monuments took their best swing at it, but at the end of the day DOT is going to go for a best fit giving them their full width. They'll publish coordinates on the recovered corners and the project centerline and I'll use the station and offsets to compute the limits. Usually they fit the monuments within reason but there's always a few flies in the ointment that can really throw you for a loop if you don't have the whole picture. I've had some older 50-70s ROW maps that were not monumented by DOT back then that had me really baffled. They might show some ties along the route but making it all work is sometimes a real stretch.

My experience in MD is the plats, station and offset, mostly fit with their taking plat metes and bounds plats.  Monumentation is a real crap shoot. Sometimes we would get the construction drawings locate the structures and back in the baseline. On a few parts they actually tied property monumentation.

There was a seminar a long time ago and the state actually said that for a time the monuments that existed were set by the mowing crews, LOLOLOL. Property adjoining the RW are usually metes and bounds or record plat and for the most part fit the State RW plats. 

Posted by: @williwaw

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at the end of the day DOT is going to go for a best fit giving them their full width

That has always stuck in my craw.  In every other instance, tall, plainly visible monuments that have been in place for a long time and relied on become the property corner.  The government is allowed to do sloppy work with no repercussions.  

ROW design is developed from road design alignment. Everything else is once or more removed from that criteria. 

@tom-bushelman What sticks in my craw are their refusal at times to honor or hold concrete ROW monuments that were set by their contractors, when they've provided nothing else to go on.

Posted by: @gary_g

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How bad do they "not" match?

Speaking for Oregon, there was a period of time in the '70s and '80s where the DOT work products of record are cartoonishly bad. Prior to that and after it is universally very good. I think it not coincidental that this period corresponds, more or less, to the end of slide rules and the introduction of computers.  

Posted by: @gary_g

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There was a seminar a long time ago and the state actually said that for a time the monuments that existed were set by the mowing crews, LOLOLOL

• NYS is station/offset 

@james-fleming yea I think so!

One thing to keep in mind with older ROW's is that they can be "true north". Adjusting for that has made a few of them fit much better to our surveys. 

I’ve staked literally thousands of R/W monuments down here in the west end of the state. They are usually laid out as one of the last items on the contract, and most were set by the seeding/fencing sub.  We, the survey crew, even dug the holes and set them all on an 11 mile stretch between Benton and Murray back in 1978.  All were staked from the plans by station/offset.  I know the sub would shift them around if they hit in a bad spot, like on a ditch bank or in a ditch that had been rip-rapped. All the r/w deeds I’ve seen are by station/offset as well.  Unless they’ve changed it in the last couple years, the state was requiring a monument sheet for each one, stamped by a surveyor, showing a sketch, station/offset, and coordinates for each one, with a statement as to the accuracy.  So, station/offset gets my vote. 

I've staked and checked hundreds of stone right-of-way markers for DOT. Yes, contractors did dig the holes and set them, but not before I gave them four perpendicular offsets. I explained that they could use a string across the offset stakes, and where it crossed marked the spot. They alway liked that. Once they were set, I checked them, plugged the drill hole in the stone with lead and set a brass pin. They were always good, and most times, the offsets were too.

In the past, the highway survey crews were employees of the DOT. They ran the base line to the spot, turned 90 degrees, measured to the offset and set the stone. In my review of their work, they were meticulous. The DOT had some historic photographs of the surveyors using four person crews in order to do this.

If I had to resurvey a baseline, I would always use the stones along the edges of the rights-of-way to calculate, since the base line is theoretical at present. The observations made to the stones were as they were in place, not at some arbitrary width. After all the width expressed as an integer has no significant figures other than the ineger values.

Surveyors tend to both oversimllify and overcomplicate right of way work. If your habits start with 'I always' it's probably wrong. Every survey is it's own animal. ROW simply removes many of the establishment doctrines from the equation. Gather the evidence and evaluate it using the proper law. That will mean different things depending on the time, place, and method of creation. The actions of the parties over time can change things as well.

A local attorney has published a road creation and abandonment handbook for Idaho. It's a gold mine for road work (and it's free online). Add in some knowledge of survey methods in various eras and your work will stand out...

To find the location of boundary lines I have often found it useful to start at the beginning. Once Upon a Time there was no R/W, and then there was. This is a point of beginning. There are several ways that a right way can become established. For this discussion the method seems to be a negotiation between a landowner and a government entity. The right way was created by a conveyance document signed by the landowner. This document should act to guide a surveyor to the location of the right way in the same way that a deed does does. The document may refer to other items such as maps and surveys which should be considered as part of the signed conveyance. Such other documents should be dated before the conveyance to be relevant. Drawings revised, surveys, and monuments that are completed after the conveyance date should be disregarded.

It is assumed that the government entity or its agency drafted the conveyance document. If there are ambiguities to the location of the right of way, consideration should be given to the legal principal of contra proferentem.