[Talk-ca] Light rail mapping questions

Mike Boos mike.boos at gmail.com
Tue Oct 18 01:52:58 UTC 2016


Hello

Waterloo Region is in the process of building a light rail system. This has
meant a lot of streets are being reconstructed and changed, and now that
large portions of the line are completed, there are lots of changes that
will need to be made to map what is the largest infrastructure project
local governments here have undertaken.

There are similarities to some other Canadian light rail and streetcar
systems (with dedicated rights of way), but also some unique features which
I'd like to get some advice about how to map.

Along on-road sections, the dedicated rail right-of-way moves from
centre-running to the outsides of the street at certain intersections. (A
by-product of some of the political compromises in route choices.) Does
anyone know of any examples of tracks going from the centre to the side of
the road with traffic lanes in OSM? I expect these are going to look messy.

There are also portions of the line that will share track with a freight
corridor. From what I can tell, convention appears to be to tag it with the
heavier mode, i.e. railway=rail instead of railway=light_rail. However, the
use of the track for freight is quite small - at most one freight train
to/from Elmira uses the track at night, when light rail service won't be
operating. Should the track still be marked as 'rail' instead of
'light_rail,' or should we attempt to have the tags represent the dominant
use? (At present, some of these are tagged as railway=construction, even
though the freight train has been consistently using it overnight. This
section is also largely complete.)

Further, there is gauntlet track to allow freight trains to pass station
platforms. Do we tag the track closest to the platform as
railway=light_rail and the outer track as railway=rail? There's some
discussion here on gauntlet tracks here that suggests this is the case in
Europe: http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=29131

Thanks
Mike

-- 
Mike Boos
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/attachments/20161017/038afe10/attachment.html>


More information about the Talk-ca mailing list