Overview of railway connections when zoomed out

[njam]

🚀 feature request

Description

Allow to view and explore railway connections when zoomed out, to plan long-distance train travels. This is currently not possible for various reasons (see below).

For example, here's OpenRailwayMap:

Describe the solution you'd like

I think the way to go is to use OpenRailwayMap's approach, which is well established, and works. This means rendering railway=rail , and differentiate the importance of a track by usage=main|branch|... (ref).

imho these problems need to be addressed:

1. Bring all the relevant data into the offline map.
   • Render railway=rail at any zoom level, not only down to 7 (ref), at least usage=main
   • Add the usage= tag for railway=rail
2. Reduce visibility of streets, so one can recognize railway tracks on the map
   • We could introduce a new "Road style" which renders all roads in white
3. Render railway=rail on the map also when zoomed out. Differentiate "highspeed", "main", "branch" etc.
   • Example render config for OsmAnd: fuzzysolutions/OsmAndRailwayStyles
4. Find a way to enable this in the UI
   • How about enabling this rendering style when the user switches to the rendering mode public_transport? I guess it also makes sense to reduce the visibility/colorfulness of roads in this mode.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Load OpenRailwayMap data in OsmAnd. But this works only "online". See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenRailwayMap/API#Usage_in_OsmAnd
• Instead of rendering railway=rail one could also render route=train, but I think it's less reliable.

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wdyt?

I'd be willing to work on this feature, if it's desired. But I will need some guidance.

[spaanse]

Yes, I definitely want a style to defocus roads, since it does not make sense in some of the profiles.
The boat profile already has defocused road (since the focus is on the water), maybe use that as a separate road style.
Instead focus on

• Long distance hiking routes (Walking)
• Long distance cycling routes (Cycling, Moped)
• Train routes / long bus routes (Public Transport / Train)
• Airports (Aircraft, UFO)

Another thing to consider:
People generally don't have large maps downloaded.
For this to be really useful these large-scale features have to be part of

1. Roads-Only maps or
2. World overview map

P.S. that last profile may be my own, I use it for measuring distance as the UFO flies

[vshcherb]

Sounds cool, we have information in detailed basemap but we need to have rendering style