[Talk-us] bike rail trail as built vs as proposed and imported

[Greg Troxel]

  It's not unintuitive, it's just not the same as US legal definitions.

  disused = no longer used
  abandoned = track/infrastructure removed

OK, I see your point.  The real problem is that disused would be used
for two different situations.

But, is "abandoned" really in use in other countries to mean what in the
US we call "old railroad grade"?  (Here I am taking USGS norms to be
established practice in the US.)  Does anyone who is into old railroads
think these values make sense?

  Is there somewhere that describes the difference between "abandoned" and
  "out of service" railways, preferably something which is verifiable (in
  the OSM sense, see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability)?

The Surface Transportation Board of the ICC makes abandonment decisions,
and they are published by the federal government.  An example:

http://regulations.vlex.com/vid/railroad-abandonment-lamoille-valley-22682301

I'm not saying this is trivial to find, but it's a legal fact and very
verifiable.  It's not really any different from a private way being
accepted by a town and becoming a public way, or whether people have a
legal right to walk on some path.


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