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How do I map a secured territory along the railway/tube tracks?

Example area: London, Stretch of a Northern tube line between Edgware and Colindale (https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/51.6014/-0.2575) See screenshot

There are tracks and a fenced area with trees/bushes on both sides. As I understand that's a buffer zone which is maintained (or at least owned) by Tube/Rail company. I see it's mapped as landuse=forest, but from what I've learnt it's not the right usage of this tag. primarily, because nothing is harvested from this 'forest' and it's not really a forest.

So what would you suggest as a better option?

railway landuse forest uk tube

asked 03 Oct '20, 19:16

laechoppe
14●1●1●3
accept rate: 0%

2 Answers:

Most people would tag it as natural=wood as an alternative to landuse=forest. Another lesser used tagging would be landcover=trees but I don’t think many data consumers (i.e. map rendering sites) will render the landcover tag.

Rather than remove the landuse tag, you might want to change its value: landuse=railway. It doesn’t quite fit with the description on the wiki page but if it is owned and maintained by a rail company as part of their infrastructure it seems like that would be okay.

answered 03 Oct '20, 21:58

n76
10.8k●10●82●172
accept rate: 17%

Exactly what can be inferred from "landuse=forest" and "natural=wood" has been debated for some time - see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Forest for a discussion of that.

"landuse=railway" (in addition to something that says "there are trees here") sounds good for what you are describing though.

(03 Oct '20, 22:06) SomeoneElse ♦

Could add an explicit managed=yes if one knows the natural=wood is actively maintained. Sometimes there are vegetation growing mindlessly on managed lands.

(04 Oct '20, 09:33) Kovoschiz

0	Adding to the answer above, according to this page in Russia they voted for the same approach (use of `natural=wood`) answered 04 Oct '20, 20:14 laechoppe 14●1●1●3 accept rate: 0%