[Tagging] Lifecycle of rail

[stevea]

I think the lifecycle of rail sorts itself out.  Let's stick to one tag at a time; the service=* tag starts somewhere in my mind of a large no-no and ? question mark.  It is a firm U-turn and don't say service=anything after that.  There was plenty of misunderstanding to go around, I think.  That happens, I'll call it "OK, fine, happened, move on."

I think a tag like railway=testing is valid for the sort of "initial traffic for testing circuits and switches and welds..." rail elements.  This is inevitable for a construction=anything.  Light rail "is built," after all.  Then it gets tested, toughened up and opened to the public.  I think that's all this is.  It gets sorted out with tagging at a "more local" and rapidly-changing intelligence.  Maybe that intellingence is yours because you saw some test traffic or something on the line.  OK.

Where there is "initial testing traffic" (gonna happen) those become rail=railway where they are, they lose the construction tag.  Bye, construction tag.  A rail element at a time.  Pop and shuffle those tags the way those cars are pushed onto and off of any railway elements that might (still) have construction tags on it.  The tags on the segments mean something.  The yard nearby has traffic. It's active rail, let's call it.  It's being tested, like where the hammers and wrenches get removed from the site.  You likely know more about this than I do!

Push those tags off and on as reality shifts.  Change 'em on up.  What was blue is now red.

In short, "manage your local rail."  (With tags on rail elements).  As best you can to reflect reality.  I happen to think ORM gives a "fair" view today, we might quibble.

Keep alive the local rail in OSM, pop and jiggle them tags, yeah, baby.

Clay and I just did a bit of this jiggle and dance with local rail in San Diego county.  The yellow and green lines in ORM.

The cars move on, the cars move off.  Some rail segment is no longer a construction-tagged piece of railway in our map and it loses that construction tag.

Railways are gonna get built and used, and do, and are.  We fix the tags so the snarls move along and everybody nods our heads that it is amazing and all works.  It does.  We edit the map and fix up tags and it does, it works to reflect reality.  Sort of.  Mostly, well, better in some places than others, for sure.

There is the real world and there is OSM and the former should reflect reality as much as is possible.  So we bump around some tags on our map.  And it's all good and it grows and is smarter and bumps and jiggles around and we wave at each other and it's hugs and pizza and beer all around.  It's a fine project and I continue to be shaking your hand.  And we fix tags on the local rail and bump and grind some tags and like a merry-go-'round and it's nice to shake your hand again.

I'm glad we have this mostly worked out, until we don't again, or do or shake each other's hand.

To look smart, somebody might stab usage=test where it's true.  Yeah?  How up-to-the-minute do you wanna be?