[Talk-transit] Railway route relations

[Peter Miller]

On 11 Aug 2009, at 09:23, Frankie Roberto wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 8:21 AM, Jochen Topf <jochen at remote.org>  
> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 01:31:10AM +0200, Cartinus wrote:
> > On Monday 10 August 2009 09:10:15 Jochen Topf wrote:
> > > The "infrastructure route" is something different from the  
> "moving vehicles
> > > forming a route". They are two different concepts, so they  
> deserve their
> > > own keys. A bicycle route or walking route is more like an  
> "infrastructure
> > > route", there are signs on the way. Its a physically existing  
> thing. The
> > > "moving vehicle route" (which we called a line) is more  
> "ephemeral".
> >
> > To me signs have nothing to do with infrastructure. For me the  
> infrastructure
> > are the roads themselves. So to me a cycleroute is a moving  
> vehicle route.
> >
> > From this follows that introducing "line" relations is not  
> consistent at all,
> > because then we have a different type of relation for public  
> transport moving
> > vehicle routes and private transport moving vehicle routes.
snip
>
> I have to say, my interpretation was the same as Cartinus's - ie  
> that railway services (eg London-Paris) and bus routes fall into the  
> same category as cycle routes and walking routes.
>
> Take cycle routes, for instance. In the UK at least, well-known  
> cycle routes (such as the national or regional ones) often don't use  
> much in the way of dedicated infrastructure - instead, they are  
> simply a publicised path along existing roadways, paths, and so on.  
> They may not even be signposted at all - they may simply be  
> published in a guidebook (eg I'm not sure whether the "Sea to Sea"  
> route is signposted as such at all - http://www.c2c-guide.co.uk/).  
> So these to me seem the same as train service routes, which use  
> infrastructure (railway tracks) in the same way the bicycles do.

There does seem to a continuum from a cycle route that has physical  
signs all along its route and some of the route was built for the  
route through to a route that is recommended in the guidebook for  
which there is no physical presence.
>
>
> I think we can agree, though, that these distinctions are subtle and  
> subject to interpretation. The Routes page also includes route=road  
> for long distance road routes, which are clearly a bit more  
> infrastructure-like, but also fairly conceptual (as they're not  
> always one long physical road, but rather a collection of roads  
> grouped together and given a name or reference).
>
> This ambiguity, I think, makes using one key (route=) for both  
> railway tracks (route=railway) and railway services (route=train)  
> the simplest and most understandable solution.
>
> If there isn't yet a consensus on this, however, I think we should  
> continue to document and describe the various different proposals  
> (making an effort to make them as easy to read and understand as  
> possible), and then invite a wider debate - or simply see which  
> tagging scheme seems to end up being used the most by mappers...

I do agree that it might be useful to try using the term Route to  
describe all these forms (both infrastructure and operational) and see  
if it makes sense when presented that way - I have found in the past  
that it is often a good test to try to document a design before  
building it  - if you can document it clearly and concisely then it is  
probably a good design, if the documentation becomes full of sub- 
clauses and explanations to try to make it accurate then the design is  
probably a bad one.


Regards,




Peter


>
> Frankie
>
> -- 
> Frankie Roberto
> Experience Designer, Rattle
> 0114 2706977
> http://www.rattlecentral.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-transit mailing list
> Talk-transit at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-transit

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-transit/attachments/20090811/84301f9d/attachment.html>