[talk-au] train tour

[stevea]

On Feb 20, 2022, at 12:19 AM, Warin <61sundowner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> For a rich example, please see https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/California/Railroads/Passenger , especially the last section:  "Tourism, museum, heritage and historic (possibly passenger=local) trains."
> 
> Wow. Thanks for that...
> 
> I would think passenger=tourist would fit...
> 
>> Do recall that it is typical around the world for there to be TWO route relations associated with such a passenger route:
> 
> Some of ours, such as the India Pacific, are tourist only, other 'commuter' services are different shorter routes.

It's my pleasure if I am helpful, Warin.

To be precise, (and where to distinguish fuzziness between passenger=local vs. passenger=urban is distinctly NOT precise!) these distinctions sort themselves out in OSM to some degree.  Though, in California, we have achieved a somewhat-stable agreement (dare I say consensus?) as to a number of "dimensions" about how we do this:

• The passenger=* key:  the choice of value "urban" is somewhat vague or even contentious, not exactly 100% mappable to "light_rail," but it applies most of the time, sort of a "big-city-scale network of light_rail lines," this might include trams which get stitched in, but don't include distinctly more "heavy rail," or "commuter," trains, often tagged passenger=suburban.  In fact sometimes, underlying infrastructure membership in a light_rail relation might be tagged railway=tram, or vice versa

• Whether or not the "underlying infrastructure" (route=railway relation, usually made up of similarly-tagged railway=rail or =light_rail or =tram or =subway members) is tagged with usage=tourism.  If it is, maybe passenger=local is applied (if a modicum of "you really can get from A to B on this train, though it isn't really 'designed' for that" exists, add the tag, if not, don't)

• From our national rail wiki [1], we say length DOES have something to do with the choice of which passenger=* value might be selected.  For example, in California and USA, we use a "rough guide, seems to be working" of "Tag train routes 160 - 1400 km (100 - 870 miles) in length passenger=regional, while passenger=suburban is for full-size (commuter, "heavy") passenger rail services shorter than 160 km (100 miles), usually not light_rail and never trams."  It's a bit fragile, but it mostly holds!

There are things to think about w.r.t. "consistency among rail tagging," how many "levels" of relations you find appropriate (please choose 2, as 3 only seems necessary in Germany), how things might render in rail renderers (though don't let that "force" anything, DO be aware) and so on.  It's not really difficult, more like "comprehensiveness can be a LOT to do."

Of course, this is Oz, and I encourage you to discuss these differences amongst yourselves and find what works best there. Speaking from experience, I'd aim for doing it "just like the rest of the world" (Germany is just really complex and its own sub-world when it comes to rail, including and especially in OSM, it's the home of the ORM overlay renderer) "except where Australia does it differently" and then trying to keep the latter to the minimal set where that's actually true.  Maybe there are no real exceptions, and all rail here can follow "typical tagging for rail."  But exceptions are OK, of course, we model the real world here — nobody wants to shackle our map into a false reality because of overly-restrictive tagging regimes.

Happy mapping!

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States/Railroads , and yes, we do denote there "Note that in the United States, because of US English, "railroad" is frequently used across many contexts (not simply OSM) in preference to 'railway' (which is more British English)."  Feel free to borrow anything you like from this.