They are (as indicated to me) actually a LIDAR smear, approximated. These data may represent an old trail or roadbed, it's hard to say. A path, desired, maybe. Could be useful in an emergency evac, maybe.

I had a chat with user:agrifolia about these, as he originally entered these data. They have been changed to desire paths. No need to follow-up; happy mapping!

P.S. Railways, especially passenger services that "sit on top of" (logically / semantically speaking) rail infrastructure (sometimes shared with freight rail, sometimes not) is a fairly "advanced" topic in OSM. It literally took me several years of practice, talking to others, reading (and writing!) wiki, seeing how things are done in Europe, (especially Germany, QUITE different from the rest of the world, but still in a working "3 relation" framework whereas most of the rest of the world uses a "2 relation" framework), how things are done in China, how rail kind of "drifts apart" from technical specifications from one country / region and another (though, technically, it's "all still rail on Earth") and on and on.

Even with good knowledge of computational linguistics, cartography and a good historical knowledge of rail, I STILL find it a challenge to keep it all straight!

The "trick" is to eat things one bite at a time, climb higher with your knowledge and your view gets better and better with "more altitude" (as you climb). Happy Mapping!

That's great; I'm glad to hear things make sense. I am constantly amazed at how OSM teaches me things, and when I do them "as we all agree" (and that can sometimes be difficult as we hammer out the details), things "just work."

We're (all of us!) always able to learn something new; good on us when we do.

In short, in OSM, you simply can't have a route=train without its underlying infrastructure. In the USA (North America, really) in OSM, we use two relations, #1, the route=railway (physical infrastructure expressing trackage, organized into logical wholes which follow certain rules) relation, and #2, the route=train (passenger services) relation.

In a relational database like OSM, this is simply "if you wish to (properly, so everybody understands) express a passenger train route, here's how." And we even have PTv1 and PTv2 flavors. These are version 1 and 2 of the Public Transport schemes that have evolved.

It's a "whole thing," my friend. And it can be read about in our wikis.

That's why.

I'm happy to help, but I'd rather get things correct, than wholesale delete (which is what a revert of the changeset would do).

The idea in OSM is to "draw into the map" what you see (or know) using easily-discovered tagging schemes.

So, let's do that together. I can fix what appears to be wrong easily, rather than deleting the entire edit session. Is the "north of the Open Air Stage" line-squiggle (such a line segment in OSM is called a "way") a footpath? Paved? Dirt? Is it wide enough to drive a vehicle down, even if only dirt or gravel?

And so on.

The nice thing about OSM is you can make it "rather vague" (to quote Brian Eno) or you can "do like Deutschland" (German mappers in OSM are notoriously detail-oriented down to the very benches and drinking fountains in every park).

I like the rough sketches in Deer Creek, they look great and can act as "just enough" for locals. There's a sweet spot just waiting to happen.

This is simply a "syntax=semantics" equation. OSM has, and does, partly by evolving for its data structures to represent the semantics of "passenger rail routes" as a certain kind of route=relation. These are predicated upon route=railway relations. They simply "are" this way in OSM. In Germany (and I believe in other parts of Europe), there are THREE relations needed to properly express the semantics of how passenger rail (at the "top" of the 3-relation hierarchy) use the "middle" route=railway AND the "lowest" route=tracks relations.

In North America we eliminate the route=tracks relations (it works to express our familiar "subdivisions," as USA railroads do, with route=railway relations and eliminate route=tracks relations).

This is simply "how we do it." It has evolved over decades of OSM and world wide rail tagging, and I've been there, around the world.

Just get the syntax the way everybody else uses it and everybody else will use the data smoothly.

Your characterization of "a linestring of freight rail elements" has some overlap with what I'm talking about, but that is exactly why we use such "intermediate" (route) relations in OSM (which is a relational database, and has quite exact syntax that means quite exact semantics).

We've tuned up landuse=railway and railway=station and a bunch of stuff about railways in general in OSM in our wikis. Read up on it, they're marvelous for us all to not only see how things are done, but to see how others do things, including making changes to how we map.

Hi DoubleBear, welcome to OSM! Can you explain the hundreds of meters long amenity bench here? I can (sorta) see a large amphitheater here, too, but is this a walkway or a path, rather than a bench? Thanks in advance.

I appreciate your attempt at using the proposed:route=train tagging, but that is 100% superfluous. In OSM, train routes (passenger AND freight) are "born first" as railways. If you wish to build a (fantasy) route=train, use another relation, and put the proposed stations into that, and use the route=railway elements properly. Please remove your tag and (optionally) build a proper (start with PTv1) route=train, if you wish to do that. There are correct ways to achieve the semantics you seem to mean, so, use the right syntax to do that.

Nope, not for decades and decades. In the meantime, it's a route=railway, like other construction projects. Heck, it's either not even or just barely a construction project (of a railway), not even CLOSE to a route=train.

Cool; thanks!

Cool!

Why is this in OSM, again?

👍

There isn't any specific talk pages (or topic in our Discourse forum) that I know of for the contentious (less so now, it has calmed down in the last several years) topic of "mountain bike mapping in Santa Cruz County."

There are OSM Contributors in and around FNMSP (Ken Adelman, others) and OSM Contributors in and around UCSC and the very touchy areas in western Henry Cowell State Park (not Fall Creek Unit, the part that abuts UCSC). Over the years, the tagging on these trails has evolved to where it is now...but I always expect there to be friction about exact access tags on particular trails, as those have vacillated heavily between "this" or "that" Contributor. Sometimes "sparks fly" (disagreements erupt) but for the most part, people are earnestly trying to get everything right.

The "lesson" that seems to shake out at the end is "please listen closely to your fellow mappers, even to the point of changing YOUR tags to THEIR tags, as they are more 'provably' correct." I've actually telephoned the state police officers who enforce mtb trails west of Hwy 9 between UCSC and HCRSP to get both the law and the notice of posting of what the local rules are because that was the most definitive "verifiably legal" method that I knew how to establish what the "rules" are.

Simply stated: be aware this is a shared map, sometimes disagreements arise, and if/when they do, please listen.

Again, Happy Mapping.

Thanks for replying so quick. The misspelling and abbreviation were small things, almost not worth mentioning.

What I mean is that some people might disagree with you about your specific tagging (what is legal as to access), so "listening skills" as to what others say about those around here are important. I'm not saying your tagging is wrong, simply that others might have some dispute, and to be open to their views if disagreements about specific access tags here arise in the future. (They have in the past).

Happy mapping!

It's Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. Remember, we sign our names to everything here. It's OK, mistakes happen. I'm not sure everyone knows UC means under construction, I had to think about it for a minute.

Chunks like this often get managed / curated by a knowledge representative, perhaps this is you. It's a good size chunk of area for focus, and sparse (seem largely blank, but not really blank) as is.

I'm sparse here (hiking, exploring); it's rough, for sure. I'm only vaguely aware of edges of this area. I do know other mappers who hike and bike here.

"Accurately" tagged is best. Sometimes that gets difficult but our consensus eventually hammers it out.

Really, anywhere is ripe for some of-the-moment improvement. Do keep up with dialog from others who may disagree or tag otherwise. That very dialog itself is important.

With a tap-tap here and a tap-tap there....

Thank you!

Yeah, it's a rebuilt house now, so I've changed the (identical) footprint to building=house. Thanks for catching this!

No complaints, you do a lot of good work around here showing where roads can and can't be accessed — I / we / the map appreciates your detail!