Proposal talk:Tag:service=diversion

Tag name and definition

Thanks for pushing this forward. Would you want me to fill out the "rationale" section with some more of the reasons I specified in my earlier messages, or more worldwide examples?

Personally I liked usage=irregular as it was more easily backwards compatible: track could be specified as service=siding + usage=irregular while all the tooling (and frankly, rendering) was being switched over. But I don't feel very strongly about this. --Jarek Piórkowski (talk) 14:53, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

You're welcome! I've just added some advantage of this new tag to the Rationale section, but please feel free to expand it. Some more worldwide examples of diversion tracks are also very welcome!

In my opinion, diversion tracks are not siding tracks and thus it is wrong to tag them service=siding. Therefore, no backward compatibility is needed. The reason why i switched from usage=* back to service=* is that diversion tracks are similar to the other service=* keys (e.g. service=yard) and because a branch or tourist line may also have diversion tracks.

By the way, Martin has pointed out that "irregular" may get confused and recommended another tag value. Therefore I am thinking about the following alternatives: auxiliary, reserve or diversion. What do you think? --SelfishSeahorse (talk) 18:46, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

service=<something> sounds good to me but irregular odd (I thought about a not well defined timetable, for instance going back and forth but depending on the traffic). Exceptional is more what you mean, so service=exceptional? Auxiliary, reserve or diversion are better than irregular IMHO. I'm fine with diversion but you may think about more use cases than just diversion. --Nospam2005 (talk) 21:04, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Hm, I looked through my initial email and I'm not finding many diversion turn tracks, it was mostly tail tracks. I could add lots of Berlin and Toronto examples of diversion connections but I guess that won't be as helpful. Sorry.

The difficulty naming is one of the things I've also ran into initially. "Non-revenue trackage" is the description used in Toronto and has a Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-revenue_track according to history created as a translation of https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsstrecke and searching Wikipedia for "non-revenue track" or "non-revenue trackage" does find some usage in what seem to be mainly North American-focused articles. I don't know if it's really internationally recognizable.

"Diversion" seems the best thing I can think of for turn tracks. "Auxiliary" seems a wider term than "diversion", which might be an advantage, as it would cover the Verbindungsgleis at Hermannplatz 436121606 436121606 which, as far as I could tell, is not actually used for diverted passenger service but only for stock moves. "Auxiliary" could also cover tail tracks like 640855704 640855704, which currently have inconsistent tagging (see my initial January email) and would be nice to normalize. But the disadvantage is then that writing a good definition to include all of these cases (and nothing else) would be difficult. Perhaps two or three new values, "diversion", "tail", and "auxiliary"? --Jarek Piórkowski (talk) 01:41, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Interesting: Das Beispielgleis OF-Ost - OF-Hbf war vor paar Tagen erst Thema im deutschsprachigen Forum (#3 etc.) Now it has usage=main, because the Rodgaubahn formally ends at OF Hbf, not af OF-Ost, but since some years, it is only used for diversion and stock move ... --Schienennagelhammerträger (talk) 20:01, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Can you please add the URL of the messages you are referring too? Here it's the wiki, not the mailing list (feel free to delete this entry when you update). Another edge case: crossing prepared for the planned new line 645092070 645092070 or of the same purpose what you would name a tail 645092069 645092069.

siding is also literally a "Non-revenue trackage", not sure it's a good idea to use this North-American terminology: it could be confusing elsewhere. --Nospam2005 10:04, 10 April 2019‎ (UTC)

Sorry, it's been linked before so I neglected to link in the talk page. It is the first message linked in Proposed_features/Tag:service=diversion#External_discussions: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2019-January/042313.html. --Jarek Piórkowski (talk) 12:27, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, it's very hard to find a good tag name and description that also don't overlap with current service=* values.

I think it were better if connection tracks for empty runs and diversion tracks share the same service=* value. The problem with service=auxiliary however is that the other service tracks may also be considered auxiliary tracks. And service=reserve could get confused with so-called reserved tracks, which are tracks on ground exclusively for trams, as opposed to street-running tracks. I'm trying to find out how these tracks are called in the UK. So far, service=exceptional seems to be the best option – thank you, Nospam2005, for that idea!

As for track (parts) that belongs to a planned line and are not used yet, they do not not fit well into service=* in my opinion, as they currently are not used at all. I think that operational_status=non-operational fits better. (Perhaps another possibility were a new lifecycle prefix, such as unused:*.) And the tail track you linked is a dead-end siding track, thus the service=siding seems correct. --SelfishSeahorse (talk) 08:49, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately i haven't found out how these tracks are called in the UK or other English-speaking countries. Therefore i suggest to rename the proposed tag to service=exceptional. Regards --SelfishSeahorse (talk) 06:53, 23 April 2019 (UTC)