[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - More Consistency in Railway Tagging

[Martin Atkins]

Hi all,

In an earlier thread I lamented that railways are tagged inconsistently 
throughout the world, and in some cases even within a certain area. I 
attribute this to a lack of definition in the railway tagging scheme.

With that in mind, I've written up a proposal that attempts to:

- Refine the basic railway=* tagging to have a more specific definition, 
taking inspiration from the tagging conventions around highway=* .

- Adapt the "lanes" tagging scheme from highways to allow descriptions 
of individual tracks of a railway where railway mappers find that detail 
to be interesting.

- Tackle in particular the (previously very under-defined) mechanism by 
which we can tag tram lines that run inside highways, which is close to 
my heart as a mapper in a city that has lots of them.

Here's the proposal:
 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Railway_Schematic_Mapping

I apologize for the length; I was trying to be thorough and avoid 
ambiguity. All constructive feedback is welcomed!

Thanks,
Martin