Talk:Tag:passenger=international

North American length

I believe that the sentence "With lengths of ~600 to 900 km, these are neither "long distance" nor overnight trains, though they are "inter-country" (customs and passport check within 100 miles of the border, etc.)" belongs in the description beginning "In North America...". I understand that these lengths are unusual outside of Russia and North America, that is precisely why it is informative to include this fact here. Stevea (talk) 07:34, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

The mention of "long distance" and "overnight" are both optional things, and the 3 routes are still listed so there's no ambiguity. The real problem here is that passenger=international won't be much use for rendering or classifying things in North America, since the really long, overnight routes which are equivalent to European or Asian "International" service are trains which cross the continent but stay within one country, so the passenger=national lines will often be longer than the passenger=international lines; eg Coast Starlight vs Cascades. But feel free to reword the page --Jeisenbe (talk) 11:53, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

"Long distance" and "overnight" being "optional" confuses me a bit, I'm not sure why you say that. As long as we make clear distinctions between NA and European passenger trains having the "twist" they do which you point out exactly above, I don't see it as "a problem" that trains do what they do where they do it. The entire point of using tags like international and national is to be accurate, OSM should strive to be accurate in these regards, as there is no ambiguity between trains which stay in one country vs. trains which cross an international boundary. The entire point of documenting tags like international and national is to highlight these distinctions around the world, as exactly these sort of twists exist, and it can be (is) useful to explicitly point them out. I'm considering replacing the text in the Page, but haven't yet, as I'm in a listening mode regarding further discussions about this tagging. Stevea (talk) 17:56, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Passport requirements

Regarding Jeisenbe's comment to my "These often require the passenger holds and presents a valid passport" - not true in Europe, and implied in other places by "cross international borders": sure. I considered adding "except in Europe's Schengen Area" but didn't. It seems we have difficulty properly expressing (between the two of us, though maybe it is wider than that) that there are differences between how national and international train routes are thought of between European and North American passengers. Again (continuing from discussion in the above "North American length" section), I strive for accuracy in tagging — and documenting this in wiki — which precisely disambiguates what are essentially parochial assumptions. By "parochial's" definition of "having a limited or narrow outlook or scope" I don't mean that in any pejorative sense, simply that people (map readers, train route decipherers, folks in general) do tend to make assumptions that "we do that here, we likely do that everywhere" when actually, "we distinctly do not do that everywhere." I do take your point that "trains which cross international borders" gives the reader of the Page enough context for a passenger to determine for him or herself whether a passport is required. Stevea (talk) 23:01, 19 January 2020 (UTC)