Hi Clifford: Both relations in this changeset DO have rail elements: the NP Wahluke Branch has railway=disused elements and Lordsburg Sub is full of railway=rail. The two old relations were deleted (being replaced with these).

What, exactly is the question? I'm happy to change something so it is "fixed," better or more conforming to OSM standards, but I am not clear on what you are pointing out is wrong here.

OK, I think I got the Whiskey Island north end the way you describe (and so does ODOT's application to AASHTO now make better sense).

However, any other parts, especially ones you recently biked in the last week, PLEASE, you are fully qualified to "fine tune" the route anywhere!

PLEASE change the USBR 21 relation to contain actual, better bicycle infrastructure along here. There are a lot of eyeballs looking at whether we're getting it right here, so, yeah, a local mapper who ride/rode it absolutely ROCKS at entering better route relation elements here. Yeah!

Thanks for the shout-out. Great to see your name, mapping and well, go OSM!

I appreciate that.

My sister went to SDSU, my father started KPBS-TV (Channel 15) there about 55 years ago. I have fond memories. Sail Bay was a lot of fun; all my friends were old enough (14) to get a SCUBA license, I was 13-3/4 that summer, so I learned to sail (instead).

That's fine, Minh. This was an "old-fashioned" way I used to do things (while trying to adhere to OSM's international status and being "more metric") rather than the "entrenched by inertia" (and hundreds of years of practice) of US railroads being firmly entrenched with SAE (non-metric) units.

I'm OK with railway=razed where that is a "more accurate" tag than railway=abandoned.

But yes, you can see how it is easy to reach a conclusion that "OSM conventions" are absolute, when, at least in the case of "old rail," it's less clear. This HAS led to contention (and appeared to have done so here, however briefly), but as we seem to be concluding, doesn't have to, as there are "somewhat better" tags to denote the often-rather-complex lifecycle of rail, which for decades or centuries, leave long-lasting effects on the land (in a cartographic sense). Thanks for your open-minded approach to this, that's a big help!

Yes, this route really should be here. (You asked).

An abandoned railway is quite often a "verifiable, present thing." Some have physical presence, some have very little or none. However, if you read our wiki, you'll discover that rail tends to leave very long-lasting influences on the landscape (sometimes for centuries) and the route, whether actual infrastructure (like embankments, tunnels, bridges, cuttings...) remain or not, the routes (even as you dismiss them as "historical") remain as important entities in the real world today.

No, you are going to leave these data in OSM, as they are part of a huge amount of railway=abandoned in both California (and Earth, too). OSM has been mapping these for decades and will continue to map these into the future, this is established precedent in our project.

See osm.wiki/California/Railroads, (specifically, osm.wiki/California/Railroads#Abandoned_lines) and similar states (in the USA, using various countries around the world...). Confirm for yourself that we who map such rail infrastructure are completely within well-established OSM practice and precedent.

Saying "I'm gonna give a week for comments..." (until you remove valid data?) is NOT well-established OSM practice. Especially as I (the author) have replied. So, thank you for notifying me of your intentions, but they are misguided. Please refer to our wiki on the topic of abandoned rail, as while it CAN be contentious, (it has a history of it, in fact), it doesn't have to be.

Nice!

It is also true that "someone might write some succinct wiki about this."

The value special_district fits into (what in the USA) are described as one of two "not-governments" by US Census bureau (which I've wiki-documented myself): true "governments" of state, county or county equivalent and city/town and two "others, not-governments" of "special district" and "school district." While the Bureau should not be what defines OSM tags, in this case it is useful to make exactly these distinctions of government and non-government boundaries. (In other cases where the US Census Bureau categorizes in specific ways, OSM is known to distinctly diverge).

Minh is being kind when he says "it would be a stretch:" Metro and special districts like it clearly are not subordinate or superior to the cities they serve (if indeed they serve "cities"). They are a different animal than a government, being tasked with an often narrow list of responsibilities (even as they are funded to do so; I fund my water district when I pay my water bill).

OSM deserves some well-written wiki about how we mean "special district." There indeed are special districts in the USA: COGs, Special Districts, MPOs, MPOs which are also other (sometimes many other) things...this is rich in its implementation yet we have not well expressed what their commonalities are; it appears there are some. Let's try to "categorize the special," as difficult a craft as that might seem — we certainly can do this. I encourage well-written wiki on this topic.

I am very supportive of the tag boundary=special_district in this case. I have postulated similar tagging before (using acronyms), though I like the "fully expressed" special_district value. It is appropriate and unambiguous.

tguen, "Metro" is not a de facto government and should not be tagged admin_level=7 (nor boundary=administrative). In fact, it is described in Wikipedia as a "planning organization" and indeed, OSM had this discussion (and came to the same conclusion here: osm.wiki/Talk:United_States_admin_level#Consolidated_city-counties_beyond_a_single_county:_admin_level.3D5.3F over four years ago.

Such tagging on Metro needs at least far more discussion than a single person editing a "more friendly" wiki to include an MPO as admin_level=7 (I'll tell you straight up: it isn't!) and then asserting this tag on "Metro" around Portland.

Please remove the wiki entry and this tag on "Metro." You might tag it boundary=MPO but you can't tag it boundary=administrative (which is required for an admin_level tag), as it isn't a de facto administrative boundary, it is an MPO boundary. This means that any admin_level tag in incorrect.

There is also that pretty cool statewide "story map" that is noted in the wiki. It gives a good, rather pretty overview of Utah's (pending) USBRs.

Sometime "this summer," (June? July?) I'll make another talk-us post when I hear when these get approved — assuming they do, they all have so far, 100% of the time, but you never know if AASHTO will find some technical reason to reject them — hasn't happened yet, though.

I also appreciate you making the "full circle" of updating the wiki. That's really helpful when doing these. In fact, it's WAY more important to "get 'em in" (to OSM) than it is to mention so doing in the wiki, but the wiki does a pretty good job of "status reports," but only when people keep it updated with what's really in the map. Again, thanks.

Happy mapping!

Really nice work on all you have done so far on USBR 77. That's it: I simply want to thank and congratulate you on some great improvements to both OSM and the USBRS.

Haven't you got something else to do? (Even if it sounds a bit nasty)

There is an exception for SHAPE* keys.

Hello Georg. WHAT "unknown tags?" The tags on way/914890246 are documented on our county page, osm.wiki/Santa_Cruz_County,_California

The latter (semicolon converted to a comma-space) has been implemented on this and all other USMOI where there were semicolons. Thank you for the suggestion.

I did, and because of the way you stitched it into the super-relation, I didn't even have to update the wiki! (which links to the super). Thanks again!

Nice work, Russ! Thank you. I'll update our USBRS wiki.

New tagging looks great; thanks for updating my previous changes to be more accurate as of now, especially the name=* tag.