[OSM-talk] OpenRailwayMap Electrification Status vs tag electrification=no

[Jonathan J. Bittner]

Sorry I wasn't subscribed to this list when Pierre asked me to weigh in so
I don't have the original message to reply to and may mess up archive
threading.


I had been doing some tagging for OpenRailwayMap and I noticed a major
change in my latest data pull that an entire line went from black
(non-electrified) to gray (undetermined/not tagged) in my local renderer. I
saw that 'electrified=no' had been removed for an entire line. I looked at
Pierre's changeset comments and it said electrification tagging was removed
because it was extraneous.  So I sent him a note.

In this case, the line in question (Hudson Line) has three parts:
electrified commuter segment, non-electrified commuter segment, and then
freight railroad segment (freight and Amtrak running on all three
segments).  Electrification tagging of the lower segment is incomplete: the
yard is not tagged and I believe electrification extends further north than
the rendering currently shows.  For this line it is most crucial to know
the difference between sections deliberately tagged non-electrified and
sections that have not been addressed.

Link to the line in question:
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=electrified&lat=41.19993665749705&lon=-73.85563373565674&zoom=14
(note OpenRailwayMap's rendering changes are several days behind)

While this line is more sensitive to tagging changes, I still believe that
if someone spends the time to specifically mark a line as non-electrified,
those tags should stand.  It's also useful in areas with actual
electrification to mark the neighboring lines as non-electrified. One
person's extraneous/redundant might be very important to another person.
Some folks have removed my 'abandoned:railway=rail' tags as being
"redundant" to 'railway=abandoned' when the abandoned:railway tag indicates
whether an abandoned line was a rail line, tram line/trolley line, light
rail, narrow gauge line, etc.  It also affects the rendering priority of
OpenRailwayMap due to the high density of ambiguously tagged abandoned tram
lines in certain areas.

Thanks,
Jonathan
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