<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:14pt"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 14pt;"><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">>I had some contact with the RoW officer at Cambridgeshire County Council recently (he was pointing out that we had a footway down as a cycleway, though it still is because I didn't think I could use his info based as it was on an >OS base map!)<br><br>Now that's an angle I'd not thought of before! So the question is, what sources of information about public rights of way are there that aren't derived from OS data? Or are the OS attempting to assert rights to this information itself, whereas in fact they only have rights to their own derivative of this information in the form of its representation on their maps?<br><br>Actually, the current
tagging doesn't seem to have enough granularity here. The highway=path, highway=footway, foot=yes, horse=designated etc. tags doesn't seem to include a way of actually saying if a path is a public right of way or a permissive path. Some paths I have added are permissive paths under a DEFRA scheme (valid until 2014), and not actually rights of way. There isn't an obvious way of distinguishing this from a RoW in OSM. I had an altercation with the tenant farmer on one of these as I was walking where the map said the permissive path went, but he claimed the path was actually somewhere else (he said there was too much risk of foot and mouth disease with the public walking this close to the farmyard, which would be totally irrelevant if I had some sort of right to walk there in any case. I'm not clear what 'rights' I have exactly if it isn't a RoW; I also thought it a slightly odd comment for what appeared to be an arable farm).<br><br>>I tentatively
arranged a lunch date with him and one of the GIS people at the County, but never followed it up. If I do that now, do you want to come along, Donald?<br><br>After pausing briefly to think about this.....why not? I'd probably learn quite a lot.<br><br>Donald<br><br></div></div></div><br>
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