Proposal:Subways

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Subways
Proposal status: Abandoned (inactive)
Proposed by: *
Tagging: subway=rail
Statistics:

Rendered as: ?


this proposal has had little work (one comment) in the past year - it has been removed from the proposals page

I see a problem with the current map features for subways. Right now there are two tags in Map Features that are related to subways:

  • Linear, Physical, key=railway, value=subway
  • Node, Physical, key=railway, value=station

There's no way to differentiate a subway station from a train station. For subway stations, we could use the following instead:

  • Node, Physical, key=railway, value=subway station, A subway station.

Or maybe we could create a new key for subways:

  • Linear, Physical, key=subway, value=rail, A subway rail.
  • Node, Physical, key=subway, value=station, A subway station.

Also, the icon for a subway station could be an arrow pointing downwards, just like the one they use at the entries of the metro stations in Montreal. You can find an example of this symbol in the lower right corner of this image. I like this arrow because it really indicates that there's something underground and the symbol can hardy be mistaken for something else. Novem 05:03, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Problem is, different countries use different icons. That arrow pointing downwards can look alien to people used to other pictogram. For an example of Madrid's subway icon, look http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Madrid_Metro_Sign.jpg Ivansanchez 12:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

What I think would probably be more useful is a key=line/network value=LU,national. The problem is that sometimes stations are shared between different forms of rail: a good example of this is Wimbledon in London where the tramlink, railway and tube all share the same station entrance/ticket hall/barriers. Also lots of subway stations aren't underground... at least in London they aren't... in fact the tube network is mostly above ground. grrr. Randomjunk 12:30 28th Nov 2006

Shared stations would be easy with this scheme. Just have a single node with subway=station, railway=station. --KristianThy 09:08, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I tend towards favouring railway = railway | subway and railway = station | subway_station and leaving it up to each country or city to decide whether a "subway_station" is because it is on a special railway system (London) or because it actually physically underground (Tokyo and perhaps Sydney). The London model is to have two distinct rail networks, railways and subway, so that a subway station is always a subway station whether it is above or below ground. Hong Kong, Mexico DF and I think Paris are similar. Tokyo on the other hand is much more blurred with long ordinary lines coming in from the suburbs and going underground through the centre - Chikatetsu ("under-rail" / subway) stations are usually called that because they are physically underground. And just to keep things generally confusing, Sydney does the same a Tokyo but makes no distinction at all, a station is a station. MikeCollinson 14:17, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we could apply tunnel = yes to sections of rail/subway track, and rail/subway stations, which are located underground. This would include all underground stations and track, whether they are called subways or not. The "subway" tag would only apply to underground rail that is called "subway" or "metro" or something like that - i.e. the Paris Metro would be tagged "subway", but the Paris RER or the Sydney commuter rail would not. The use of tunnel = yes for all underground rail would also be useful for underground light rail, e.g. the "pre-metro" in Brussels, Belgium. Andrewpmk 03:24, 9 October 2007 (BST)

this proposal has had little work (one comment) in the past year - it has been removed from the proposals page