Catching up on this thread (a bit on the late side, just upgraded macOS from Monterey to Ventura) I could say a lot.
In short, I think you've got it right tagging construction=* when you get actual digging, paving, power-poles and laying of rail. I like "well, we've got road closures already..." meaning that "we're under construction," that sounds right. And as a segue, "construction" means "funded," what I consider a crucial aspect for any project, and anybody rolling backhoes or paving rollers is getting paid to do so by a project manager and authority with money for paychecks and material. Where I could say a lot more is when you might say state=proposed. (When to make the transition from tagging "proposed" to "construction" is about as easy as reading the previous paragraph). A shorter version is that OSM is OK with tagging state=proposed when "there is funding for the project." Yet, a LOT more than that in OSM gets tagged state=proposed (maybe on the up-and-up, maybe somebody needs to redact that tag or some ways). For example, see the section in our wiki [1] about California's High Speed Rail project (the USA's biggest public works project at about US$100 billion and controversial / a political hot potato in every way imaginable, although it's gotten much better in the last few months as funding gets more certain and Phase 1 enters a sort of "middle"). While there were always Phase 1 and Phase 2, in 2019 (with a new Governor elected) and especially 2020-2 (with COVID), the project has been "re-defined" in ways that both explain the delays, cost overruns, pandemic pauses, and also break apart Phase 1 into Phase 1a and Phase 1b in a way that's hard to explain. The table in the wiki tries to do this, and also tries to explain how actual "rail under construction" and "rail proposed" differ, mainly by "whether it's funded," but there are aspects of "did this pass environmental review" (most of it has), "did this complete design work prior to construction" (1b North and 1b South are IN design now), and if those two hurdles have been jumped, did it go out to public bidding and was a bid actually tendered by the Authority? For this project, and to keep OSM feathers from getting ruffled, we seem to have consensus that it's OK to put state=proposed on 1a and 1b, even though they are not quite yet funded (but are in design, which is right before bids for funding go out, and the money is "more or less promised by the state to be there") — there is odd history. So, "proposed" can be complicated before construction — it certainly is on California High Speed Rail. BTW, expect to start riding this train around 2030 (Phase 1a "Interim" service), 2031 or so for the initial San Francisco to Los Angeles service. But "construction" is pretty much "are crews constructing?" Yeah. Thanks for reading. [1] https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/California/Railroads/Passenger#California_High_Speed_Rail_(passenger=regional)_trains_(CAHSR),_under_construction <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/California/Railroads/Passenger#California_High_Speed_Rail_(passenger=regional)_trains_(CAHSR),_under_construction> _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au