Changeset: 123055526
Santa Cruz Branch from Watsonville to Santa Cruz Boardwalk is disused; detailed RR crossings; moved bridge names to bridge:name; removed incorrect and no longer relevant speed limits from disused segment; added private crossings; tagged informal trails; a
Closed by Minh Nguyen
Tags
changesets_count | 24950 |
---|---|
created_by | iD 2.21.1 |
host | https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit |
imagery_used | Bing Maps Aerial;Bing Streetside;Mapbox Satellite;TIGER Roads 2021;Mapillary Images;USGS Topographic Maps |
locale | vi |
resolved:almost_junction:highway-highway | 1 |
resolved:close_nodes:vertices | 1 |
resolved:crossing_ways:building-highway | 1 |
resolved:crossing_ways:highway-railway | 3 |
resolved:crossing_ways:highway-waterway | 80 |
resolved:crossing_ways:railway-waterway | 4 |
resolved:disconnected_way:highway | 1 |
resolved:outdated_tags:deprecated_tags | 2 |
resolved:outdated_tags:noncanonical_brand | 3 |
source | CPUC;Caltrans;TAMC |
source:url | https://tamcmonterey.specialdistrict.org/files/460bd1752/Task_3_Existing_Future_Conditions_Memo_4-30-2020_FINAL.pdf |
Discussion
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Comment from Minh Nguyen
…added bridges, culverts; realigned roads, streams
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Comment from stevea
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").
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.
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Comment from stevea
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.
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Comment from stevea
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.
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Comment from Minh Nguyen
I’m happy to retag the specific portions that have had this occasional service. I thought I was merely acting on the note that was added in changeset 67040694.
It wasn’t clear to me from my research that this occasional service extends all the way from Santa Cruz to Capitola. In fact, the TAMC document I cited above states that there is indeed an isolated segment of active rail from Santa Cruz north, with the segment from Santa Cruz to Watsonville being unmaintained and out of service. However, that was 2020, and I’m happy to hear that there have been developments since.
Retagging the trackage all the way to Watsonville would raise some questions that hopefully you can shed more light on:
1. Is the old-school wigwag on Seabright Avenue still in operation? I have no idea how to tag it if so.
2. Does this tree still block the tracks south of the old county landfill? https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1074882241 It would be surprising to tag an impassable railway as anything but disused. By that logic, any railbanked trackage would be railway=rail.
3. What are the speed limits on this stretch? It had been mistagged maxspeed=40, which presumably meant 40 mph, for Class 3. But FRA records for crossings along this stretch give limits of 10 mph freight / 15 mph passenger, in line with Class 1 and consistent with the TAMC document.
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Comment from stevea
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."
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Comment from stevea
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.
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Comment from stevea
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.
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Comment from stevea
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" -
Comment from Minh Nguyen
Thanks for taking care of the retagging so quickly. The idea that a one-off trip could prove decisive against years of inactivity boggles my mind. There’s a parallel discussion in Slack about when to call a road under construction versus no-access with a very different conclusion. But with rail, I suppose any state of disrepair can be temporarily mitigated with enough resources, staff, and… intention.
I retagged the fallen tree as removed in changeset 123344330 based on the understanding that this segment was the only way last year‘s demonstration train could’ve made it to Santa Cruz. I can’t find any timestamped imagery to corroborate it yet.
These had been the only railroad=* ways in California with maxspeed not explicitly set to miles per hour, so at this point we can enter these values in mph without having to convert or worry about misinterpretation.
I’m still genuinely curious about the best way to tag a wigwag. In this changeset, I used crossing:light=wigwag, but maybe it should be a separate node representing the device itself, since it’s so rare.
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Comment from stevea
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.
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Comment from Minh Nguyen
The Bing and Esri imagery showing the fallen tree is from late 2020, according to the metadata for those images. None of the other layers offer such metadata but are most likely older.
- 1074882198, v1
- 1074882199, v1
- 1074882200, v1
- 1074882201, v1
- 1074882202, v1
- 1074882203, v1
- 1074882204, v1
- 1074882205, v1
- 1074882206, v1
- 1074882207, v1
- 1074882208, v1
- 1074882209, v1
- 1074882210, v1
- 1074882211, v1
- 1074882212, v1
- 1074882213, v1
- 1074882214, v1
- 1074882215, v1
- 1074882216, v1
- 1074882217, v1
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