I am sisncerly indebted to you for raising the difficulties you saw.

I commend you to review the various sections as presented in Way Marked Trails.

Empire State Trails website
This is the source I use.
Consistently using common codes EST, EC, HV and CV are analgous to using US, NY and CR for road numbers.
On the Way Marked Trails cycling page I note codes such as 11, EST and EC are used.  Of course these are from the ref field.
The EST website has references such as CV01 or EC28.
I have used these in the reference field and added them to the name, to assist with understanding.

I have also added as much material from the EST website as OSM will allow.  The point being to ensure users of the material in OSM can leverage of the EST website.

So, rather than create some new structure, references amd names.
