Phil! I know it seems "like it just makes sense" to combine Maryland and DC relations, but there are rather deliberate reasons to keep these separate. One is state-level, the other is federal-level (is one), but the "state at a time for route relations" is a fairly well-established method of tossing things into buckets. We do it with bike routes, motorways and more.
I think what Richard might have been describing is what Greg Troxel is trying to get at now: where we say "state sponsorship" of a rail trail begins and ends. Greg: Especially when MUTCD M1-8 signage is used on the route, network=rcn for state routes seems clear (we agree, you and I, and the wiki for at least five or six years). The [Nashua River Trail, Assabet River Rail Trail, Bruce Freeman Rail Trail...] examples you offer do "feel more local" to me as well. I am thousands of miles away on the other coast, so I only offer what I see in a wider and longer-term national scope about how this sort of tagging has evolved in the last decade or so. I'd dislike offering a "carte blanche" (too easy) sort of heuristic like "under 100 km" when what we're trying to capture here in distinguishing at the local/lcn and regional-state/rcn "levels" is (at least) two fold: 1) A "level of government" which rather handily maps "rcn=state(provincial)" and "lcn=county/city" in USA and even North America 2) A kind of way of thinking about the "greater continent-wide notion of how we think about bicycle routes" (here in North America). Sometimes, it can and does make sense for a rail trail to be an rcn even as it has started out as an lcn. I believe that "more local" (people in the state or region) have more to say about this than any single person does, though I do think it is helpful to keep in mind the evolution of these tags in North America over the last 15 years. It hasn't been orderly, but it is feeling more orderly. I think if we are careful in how we come to agreement about what it means to "promote to rcn" (and we clearly express those rules/methods of determination) in our wiki, with consensus, we'll continue to be doing the best job of this that we can. Sometimes things ARE fuzzy. Sometimes, with a little discussion, we can knock a bit of fuzz right off. SteveA California _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
