[Talk-transit] commuter rail

[Arun Ganesh]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Janko Mihelić <janjko at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think that tag is not usable. There can be a train that goes from town to
> town, making it an ordinary train line. Then when it comes to a big city, it
> stops on every station, making it a commuter train line. How do you tag
> that? I know there aren't a lot of these trains, but I think the tag isn't
> consistent. How many circles around a route does it make a commuter line?


Dedicated suburban commuter rail systems exist in 3 cities in India -
Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, with dedicated tracks just for these special
type of EMU trains. Ordinary trains do not run on these tracks. But once
outside the city limits, ordinary trains and the suburban trains start
sharing the railway line. Like Janko said, tagging the railway tracks as
commuter rail will be inconsistent.

It might be a better idea to have a classification system for the railway
lines depending on the type of usage. These could be applied to railway
route relations:

A: Mixed Use (Passenger+Commuter+Freight)
A1: Primary route
A2: Secondary route
A3: Branch line

B: Passenger services only (Passenger+Commuter)
B1: Primary route
B2: Secondary route
B3: Branch line
C: Commuter rail only (Commuter)
C1: High frequency route
C2: Low frequency route

D: Urban rail (subway)
D1: Primary route
D2: Secondary/branch routes

E: Tourism/Heritage service only

F: Freight only
F1: Primary route
F2: Secondary route
F3: Branch line

I went through the wiki, and there seems like a ton of abandoned proposals,
so its possible this might have been discussed before. Someone please point
me to where all the action regarding this is happening, I really want to
classify the Indian railway network better.


-- 
j.mp/ArunGanesh
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