[Tagging] [OSM-talk] Should we map things that do not exist?

[stevea]

As a Contributor who has spoken at national conferences on both national / regional bicycle routes in OSM and mapping rail infrastructure and routes in the USA, I wholeheartedly agree with Volker that razed/dismantled/removed/disused railways are and should be welcome in OSM.  Even a century or more after a railroad has stopped running trains on its tracks, even long after tracks and ties have been removed, the effects on the landscape, human development, transportation, recreation, land use and more that its right-of-way continue to have into the present and future are indisputable.  Railroads have very long-lasting effects and even if it is claimed "no trace of it remains" (seldom the case with abandoned rail), their past, present and future influence is obvious for anyone who cares to look.  Importantly, and especially in the USA with many, many "Rails-to-Trails" initiatives, even if they are "invisible on the ground," their rights-of-way continue to exist, and for this reason alone (among many others), they are "real enough" in OSM to map.  A current compromise is that railway=abandoned do not render in Carto.  But even though a rail right-of-way is "invisible," it still exists.  Simply stated:  these data belong in OSM.

SteveA


On Dec 31, 2020, at 9:14 AM, Volker Schmidt <voschix at gmail.com> wrote:
> Re-opening this thread, sorry.
> 
> The wording in the wiki page Demolished Railway that was introduced in July 2019 halfway in an inclusive discussion in this thread, still includes the statement:
> "Its course is well documented, but such historic feature is out of scope of OpenStreetMap, should not be mapped and can be deleted if mapped" (in a picture caption)
> There is a similar wording 
> " Place where railway existed in the past. It must not be tagged in any way, as no trace of it remains."
> that was inserted on 17 July 2019 into the wiki page Life cycle prefix
> 
> Both statements are not only not reflecting correctly the inconclusive discussion in this thread, but are also against the spirit of good practice in OSM.
> 
> As I had pointed out in several contributions to this discussion, with support of some of the other participants, there can be good reasons to have such information in OSM, and there was no agreement that such bits in abandoned-railway routes should be removed from the database.
> 
> A similar discussion has been opened in the Italian list now, proposing the deletion of such pieces that are invisible on the ground. 
> 
>  I just want to add a pointer here to a big (6k km) cycling project in the US that is underlining my point that razed/dismantled/removed/disused railways do have a place in map data.