[Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
Minh Nguyen
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us
Wed Apr 1 09:27:28 UTC 2015
On 2015-03-31 23:12, Bryce Nesbitt wrote:
> For background, in the USA there is an intermediate step to
> abandonment. A corridor can be "railbanked",
> meaning the easements don't expire. It's not an active railway, but
> it can be returned to rail service
> via an administrative procedure. And in fact, that's happened.
> Usually however these become trails,
> a process that can take decades.
I'd imagine that most railbanked rights of way would be mapped with
railway=disused (inactive tracks, possibly overgrown) or
railway=abandoned (no tracks but an embankment, greenway, or clearing
still present), as opposed to something like railway=razed. [1] The
tags' definitions acknowledge physical characteristics rather than
ownership. I don't think we need a tag about railbanking specifically,
although a note tag may be helpful as a reminder to future mappers. The
nice thing about railway=abandoned is that it can be combined with
highway=cycleway once a rail trail is built on the old grade.
[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Demolished_Railway
--
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us
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