Thanks for the response. My main reason for seeking to remove the F- prefix is that that practice is explicitly discouraged in the documentation for ref (here in English and here in Spanish)
On route=road relations, the
refis a bare “route number”,[3] relying on network=* to convey information about the road network
By including the F- prefix in the ref tag, the information that the relation belongs to the Red Vial Fundamental is in two places, the network tag and the ref tag. We could move the ref=F## into the loc_ref key, so that it remains accessible.
Also, in case there was any confusion, I am not proposing touching the highway ways themselves, which also have ref=F##, just the relation.
On the tagging scheme for the networks, I’m open to anything, including having the department code in the tag (B, H, C, L, O, N, P, S, and T). It may make most sense to put these codes at the end (for example network=BO:departamental:C). There are no road relations at this level yet but the groundwork for some of them has already been done as you point out. I had proposed fundamental, departamental, and municipal to adhere most closely to the existing terminology for the road network. If there’s a consensus to depart from that, that is fine with me.