[Tagging] Inclined elevators

[Clay Smalley]

On Fri, Dec 4, 2020, 5:00 PM Joseph Eisenberg <joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The wiki page text says that a railway=funicular is "A funicular, also
> known as an inclined plane or cliff railway, is a cable railway in which a
> cable attached to a pair of tram-like vehicles on rails moves them up and
> down a steep slope, the ascending and descending vehicles counterbalancing
> each other.”
>
> However, the description in the infobox (which is much more commonly seen
> in places like taginfo and iD) is only “Cable driven inclined railway” -
> and this could include many types of "inclined elevators” which mostly run
> on rails too. So mappers might be using railway=funicular for inclined
> elevators already.
>

Indeed they are. For example, here's the Montmartre Funicular in Paris,
which was historically a true funicular but is now technically a pair of
inclined elevators: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/29403578

The distinction between a funicular and an inclined elevator is to me a
technical one. Many inclined elevators, like the previous example, are
named as funiculars, and passengers may not even notice that they are on
one or the other - for all they know, they're just on a vehicle going up
and down steeply sloped rails.

I'm in favor of tagging inclined elevators as funiculars whenever they may
resemble one. Perhaps an additional tag like
railway:funicular=inclined_elevator could be invented for those interested
in the technical details on how the steep-slope-railway-thing works.

-Clay

>
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