Toby, that's correct: that 99 remains a proposed route number for this facility in the (local de facto and proposed but not de jure) CycleNet protocol. These would/do enter at the "local" level, hence "lcn" as a network value for the route.

Thank you for your improvements! This has been a "rough place for a bike" for many years and your fresh tagging is a welcome update!

Have at it, friend. Building perfect PTv2 routes is both a goal and a process. While I strive for the former, I happily accept the latter, especially as it is "good and forward" (or as you say "more nicer now").

Go ahead: continue to nudge this forward. Going from 98% to 99% is something I'll take (as I give it). Going to 100% would thrill me. We all nudge our data ahead as we can and do, with "perfect" as the goal, even if going to 99% isn't 100%.

I have improved this (blue route). I'll let it settle, as I'm now looking at red having only one route in the route_master is a warning that can be ignored.

Well, don't use "PT preprocessor." It isn't OSM, it's a tool that parses the syntax of PT tags. The intention of the changes was/is to include Long Term Parking, which was built infrastructure, but excluded from the route relation. (It only went as far as the Rental Car Center, but the route has included all the way to Long Term Parking for months, even over a year, I think).

If there you believe there are stop_area relation errors, fix them, you have my nod to do so.

It's better, but t likely still not perfect

Thanks; this section is sometimes called "the bypass" and expressway=yes is correct.

Delighted to "retag quickly." (a.k.a. "heavy lifting is simply lifting").

I really didn't know about the fallen tree, but I agree with you that "it must be open." I saw (in some imagery) what looked like one, but I saw no such tree (and "miles of parked tanker cars" in that vicinity in others).

Yeah, in the USA, I think rail maxspeed=* values should be explicitly mph due to history and to avoid ambiguity. This was a case of ambiguity, I'm glad it is now resolved.

Your wigwag tag (hey, that's fun to say!) seems fine, you could do a node, too. I'm quite flexible on such things, unless / until a wider community decides it's time to more strictly "standardize" on a scheme, like with a Proposal, or so different countries can come to agreement. With ORM and the country-specific wiki it has spawned, this is "going OK, so far" (in my opinion). Sometimes sloppy (USA / North America is no exception, we could use some cleanup!), but "OK." Wigwags ARE indeed rare, they are pretty cool to watch "in action" (go to Chestnut Street when Big Trees tourist train rolls down).

I'm not really following you about a one-off trip (yours? mine? someone else's?) being decisive, so I won't worry too much. However, I have noticed in this county (Hwy 236 and China Grade, specifically) that "construction" has been chosen as a tag for roads closed by the giant fire we suffered in late 2020, seemingly for their Carto rendering effect. It would be good to get wider community consensus on whether that is "best practice" or what would be better to tag on roads closed for the medium-to-longer term (because of large-scale fire, for example).

OK, getting crowded (again) in this blurb; too many topics.

Oops: minor corrections to the above:

"thought it meant 40 MPH"
and
"I've made the disused portion NOT from at the wye, but from Moore Creek"

Mmmm, because of demonstration trains sometimes going as far as Swift Halt / Natural Bridges, I've made the disused portion from at the wye, but from Moore Creek (approx. Shaffer Road) westerly out to Davenport.

Regarding maxspeed, I think that somebody mistakenly "guessed" the tracks were already Class 2 (25 MPH) and set them to be "40" (meaning km/hr, essentially the same thing). But people misunderstood the 40 as km/hr and thought it meant 25 MPH. It still isn't clear to me whether it is best to tag maxspeed=* values on USA rail as km/hr (no units, the "international OSM method") or explicitly with "(value) mph" because so much rail infrastructure history is explicitly "miles" (not kilometers).

But yes, I think exactly as you and TAMC describe, they are Class 1 on the entire branch, so 10 mph freight / 15 mph passenger, in line with Class 1. There appears to be "good intentions" to upgrade these (in places? the whole line?) to Class 2, but we are years away from that as reality.

While the traffic that happens on Santa Cruz Branch IS "occasional service," it isn't (necessarily) always for freight. Though, SCBTRR ("Big Trees," who run the tourist train between Roaring Camp and the Boardwalk "Tram Hump" halt) DO need the branch from the Davenport Junction Wye easterly to Watsonville to gain access to the rest of national rail (they have trackage rights from SCCRTC, where Progressive / Saint Paul Pacific dispatches them from Watsonville Junction).

Sometimes, because SCCRTC is trying to keep alive the tracks as money is hard to find to rehabilitate them to a higher speed Class (I think all tracks are Class I now, with capital improvements intended to upgrade to Class 2), they will run "demonstration trains." Honestly, it seems RTC does the "bare legal minimum" to run trains here so that the line can't be said to be abandoned, keeping it "barely legal" as a "running, operating railroad."

There are legal wranglings between RTC (owner) and SPP (operator), but SPP is essentially "hamstrung" to be the operator for the remainder of their ten-year-long operating contract (I believe from 2019 to 2029), so there are still seven more years for RTC to find funding and/or another operator. It's very crafty how RTC has "kept alive" the status of the Branch as "not abandoned." (Totally a "shoestring" budget and with some aggressive legal underpinnings, but so far, so good).

There HAVE been developments, such as (relatively minor) repairs to some actual rail and at least one or two trestles, but this is seriously expensive and RTC must carefully bide its time and budget. So there might be weeds, tree branches and other "blockages" (physically) to this rail, but it is the public's intention (especially after the 2-to-1 defeat of a "trail only, no passenger rail service" initiative on the June ballot by rich landowners along the Branch who have a NIMBY attitude towards passenger rail, and actually hinder the hike/bike Trail development, while pretending they are all for it).

So, it is "barely" active rail. It's about as as close to "disused" as you can be with actually being disused; I can see how it would be easy to conclude that, and the news shifts rapidly on this: one week it's "we're gonna have battery-operated TIG/M passenger ultra-light rail here!" the next week it's "um, it'll cost TENS of millions to repair that trestle, and we haven't those funds in RTC's budget."

Back and forth it goes, but RTC valiantly "keeps it alive."

I do believe that from the Davenport Junction Wye (Santa Cruz Depot area) out to Davenport, especially because the "Cement Plant" has closed, THOSE tracks really might remain "disused." However, I have heard rumors (haven't seem them though) that there are "speeders" on that Davenport section (near Laguna Beach, really). "Speeders" are people who place their own self-propelled cars onto the tracks (usually quite illegally) and "ride the rails" (then quickly remove their equipment before SPP's "bulls" catch them).

In fact, SPP's main legal complaint is that there is all sorts of illegal activity happening on the tracks throughout the county (homeless encampments, drug dealing, gang activity, even "gun running" where SPP security personnel have been threatened at gunpoint for trying to trespass people from "their" property). It's a mess.

But "just barely enough to keep it legal," traffic runs. At least between Watsonville (Junction) and at least Santa Cruz (well, Maple Street, where the Big Trees ownership change happens).

Tell you what, I'll "fix" this, making the Davenport Junction Wye-to-Davenport segments truly railway=disused. I think that's most accurate "right now." And thank you for your updates; mine and several others (e.g. UrbanUnPlanner) are trying to keep this line properly updated in OSM, but it is a serious challenge: lots of very determined parties are deeply entrenched at making their truth what's actually happening on the ground, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.

Oh, SPP might still be "storing" tanker cars — miles and miles of them — full of toxic-who-knows-what between Watsonville and Rio Del Mar (hidden among the sloughs near the Watsonville Dump / Landfill). It goes around and around and around as to what REALLY goes on "on" this line. I think because of the environmental sensitivity of the salamander refuges out there, somebody got SPP to knock that off, but I'm not sure, they did assert "as operator on this rail line, we do have the legal right to store cars on 'our' tracks."

I'll check the Seabright wig-wag next time I'm near there; last time I ate at Betty Burger there, I think I saw it and also thought "yeah, how old school." There ARE old-school wig-wags along Chestnut Street in Downtown (residential) Santa Cruz: those have got to be close to a century old and they still work (as of a few years ago), you can see those work with the tourist trains, but not at Seabright, as Big Trees doesn't go that far with the tourists.

Sorry for the length; this is a busy "thing."

Saint Paul Pacific (subsidiary of Progressive Rail, Minnesota) has an operator's license (contract to operate freight rail) on this entire branch until 2029, I believe. These are legally active rail.

See https://www.progressiverail.com/rrspp/spp.html and https://www.up.com/customers/shortline/profiles_q-s/sc_mb/index.htm and https://sccrtc.org/status-of-agreement-with-saint-paul-and-pacific-railway .

This rail has its problems / issues, but these tracks are not disused.

Additionally, SCBTRR has trackage rights on the (publicly-owned) Santa Cruz Branch (to Watsonville Junction / UP), otherwise it would be isolated from the rest of the national rail.

These are "lightly used" rail, not disused.

Minh, please undo the railway=disused tagging from here. Just months ago, there was a demonstration train here (from Capitola to Santa Cruz, I believe, though Watsonville must have been "connected").

See https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/11/04/rtc-moves-past-tig-m-roaring-camp-request-for-partnership .

You can say that there isn't "regular, revenue passenger service" here, and I would agree with you, but you can't say "disused." Rather, it is "getting shopped." That's active rail. You might say "semi-active," and I'd agree (again), but it isn't "inactive" (disused) rail.

Really nice work here!

OK, that's a subtle distinction, but I do appreciate that you've corrected me.

I do not believe that you have permission to enter these route data into OSM, doing so is a violation of our ODbL.

The copyright is owned by Adventure Cycling Association and you do not show that you have permission to enter these data. Please remove them.

Thanks for these improvements! Between the two of us (and other OSM Contributors if THEY know yet more/different up-to-the-minute data), we'll get both this infrastructure and the route members as included in the route relation 100% correctly!

USBR 20 in Minnesota — even knowing that parts of Midtown Trail are correctly denoted as under construction — is expected to be approved by AASHTO in May.

So, yes, this is all pretty "plastic" until construction is done, then we can "feather the final edges" and call it done.

And, I've been around long enough to know that sometimes springs move, especially after an earthquake. (New ones where they've never been before pop up after quakes, too)

Thanks for your great help. I'm an old hand at this, but I can't be everywhere in the map, nobody can. Many hands make light work!

About that spring, again, if it isn't there now, delete it, if it is "seen again," it can be added again. The beauty of a plastic map!