[talk-au] Converting railway= abandoned to highway=track

[Josh Marshall]

Hi,

Long-time lurker, first time poster. I mainly add/edit features relevant to off-roard bike and hiking, but mainly small ones to date and there’s a big change I’d prefer to run by the group first.

West of Newcastle is the abandoned Richmond Vale Railway, only partially covered by this route: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/173086136 . It looks like the only edits in the last few years have been by myself (neomanic) since it was updated from railway=disused to abandoned.

It is used quite a bit for trail running and mountain biking currently (I have done it a number of times), and is proposed for a rail trail: https://www.newcastle.nsw.gov.au/council/news/projects-and-works/shortland-richmond-vale-rail-trail

My proposal is to alter the ways associated with the track to highway=track (it’s all wide enough for vehicles), but retain railway=abandoned, and add all the missing ways to the above relation. 

My main reasoning behind this is to raise it’s visibility as a walk and ride option, and allow routing along it, as current routers (Strava, Komoot) ignore it altogether (much to my annoyance). It’s what’s been done for locally, the Fernleigh Track (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2269030), and elsewhere eg The Great Victorian Rail Trail (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1043265)

Now the other question is what should be done with the proposal as far as adding tags. This way is on the old rail line and part of the proposal, https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/243988974 has railway=abandoned, highway=proposed and proposed=cycleway. It’s all accessible now, so it should be highway=track (surface=unpaved), but then how to tag for the proposal?

Thanks,
Josh