[Talk-ca] Mass retagging for CPKC railroad merger

[stevea]

On Apr 30, 2023, at 6:17 PM, Jarek Piórkowski <jarek at piorkowski.ca> wrote:
> In turn, wouldn't it be owner=CPKC rather than operator?
> 
> Around the GTA we have the owners included in subdivision names and to be honest I rather like it. Like, "CN York Subdivision", "CP North Toronto Subdivision", or "GO Transit Weston Subdivision". It helps figure out why the heck there are two parallel separate lines everywhere. It's not tagging for the renderer, it's tagging for the human viewer IMO :). I'm open to pointers to map views that display the owner/operator of rail lines from appropriate tags without extra clicks.

I'm not sure if USA rail taggers were "first" at this rail-naming style, but I am the author of our wiki [1] which states:

"Please do not prefix subdivision names with the operator UNLESS a nearby identically-named subdivision benefits from disambiguation by doing so. For example, there are two "Dallas Subdivision" relations in Texas, but because of their proximity and ease with which they may be confused, one is named "UP Dallas Subdivision" and the other is named "KCS Dallas Subdivision."

(Emphasis mine).  And the latter might be more correctly/recently be named "CPKC Dallas Subdivision."

As I have noticed this wiki-suggestion (based on an initial "seed" to do so), I am glad to see somebody say "I rather like it."  So, thanks for that, Jarek.

I'm also glad to see mappers in particular countries (USA, Canada...) being very respectful (as we have been, as we are here, as I hope we continue to be in the future) and very polite with regards to "how rail is done" (named, tagged...), as it seems to work well.  (My mother taught me "It costs you nothing to be polite").  Being USA-based, I've only done very tender, quite careful mapping of rail in Canada, and making only very light suggestions in our North American Rail wiki [2], which has a slant to both the USA (a bit) and ORM, a set of excellent OSM rail overlay layers (not quite a renderer, more like several overlays, like rail infrastructure, electrification, speed limits, etc.).

Very nice, everybody.  I like the good communication about this, especially.  Rail in North America is quite a long-term endeavor in OSM, and especially since the USA's TIGER Import of 2007-8 (which many often forget pulled in noise, Census Bureau-based mid-2000s rail data, vastly improved in today's 2023) has a great distance yet to go before it is fully "well-built" in OSM.  Though, "I very much like" (my turn to say it!) how these data continue to seriously improve.  (Clay, take a bow, here, too).  "Many hands make light work!"

Steve All
California

[1] https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States/Railroads
[2] https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/OpenRailwayMap/Tagging_in_North_America