[Tagging] railway=abandoned + highway=cycleway

[Steve Bennett]

On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 2:56 AM, Mike N <niceman at att.net> wrote:
>  I would tend to keep it separate.  Ideally, once it is a cycleway, it "is"
> a cycleway, and no longer an abandoned rail line.  However I have learned
> that the abandoned rail lines should not be removed - they magically regrow,
> so I allow them to remain as they go through hillsides which have long been
> bulldozed down and through blocks of buildings which have long since
> replaced the railway.
>
>   Kept separate, perhaps eventually the abandoned railways can be placed in
> a yet-to-be implemented historical database.


Yep, this gets debated fairly often, it seems. The position I think
I've ended up at is:
- if there are physical traces, even if obscure (like a wide
reservation alongside a street, or a slight embankment), then keep the
railway=abandoned (or dismantled...not sure where that's up to)
- if it's been built over, or has otherwise left no permanent trace on
the landscape, it doesn't really belong in OSM, and could/should be
moved to some other DB.

Steve