[Tagging] Fwd: Lifecycle of rail

[Natfoot]

Tagging OSM,
The main thing to take into account is that within the lifecycle as we
look at roads, highways allow for public access, railways do not.
Example you can not take your rail vehicle and get on any old railroad
like you can driving down a road.

If I was to fix this for myself I would add service=construction or
service=testing to a railway=rail or a railway=light_rail to denote
that the railway exists and that we acknowledge that the line may not
be open to it's normal use.  Also additional relations may list
official opening dates for train or route.

Kind Regards,
Nathan P
email: natfoot at gmail.com

On Wed, Feb 9, 2022 at 3:49 PM stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:
>
> This IS somewhat confusing.  To further the tenet we have that "definitive 'how-to-tag' guidelines be located at ONE sensible place in our wiki," what I suggest we consider is that the entire section of
>
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:construction#Railways
> (with its pretty table and all)
>
> be moved (with a notation there to "See..." or "Main article..." with a link to below) to
>
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Railways
>
> as a newly titled section called "Construction" (between "Stations and stops" and "Life-cycle").
>
> Additionally, there is the issue of whether we need to or might also explicitly tag access=no on rail (we don't seem to need to do this for highways, and it is widely understood that railway right-of-way is closed to public access).  That can be addressed in the new (-ly moved) wiki section, if it needs to be.
>
> Finally, whether and how we address the topic of "railway lifecycle prefixing" in the very next section ("Life-cycle") of the same wiki, where it makes a good deal of sense for one to follow the other like that.
>
> Then, the Discussion can be taken to that latter wiki and/or its Discussion page.