[Tagging] Canoe route

[Dave Swarthout]

Thanks all for the feedback. I was away all day yesterday so excuse this
late reply.

I tagged the route as a relation a long time ago (route=canoe) but was
updating some areas lately and came across those untagged ways again and
their invisibility began nagging at me. While I don't expect anybody to
actually use a routing service to put together a wilderness trip at their
desk, I want my work to be helpful for canoeists when following "the trail"
as it weaves through myriad lakes, around islands, from put-in to take-out,
for each leg of the route. If OSM-based maps don't show the lake crossings,
how will users follow the parts of the route with the untagged ways? I'm
unsure if such a route will be followable. Does anyone know how to test it
for routablity?

On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 3:22 PM Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.kenny+osm at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 12:42 PM Dave Swarthout <daveswarthout at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I've asked this question before on OpenStreetMap Help and mapped the
> route as suggested. (
> https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/31449/how-do-i-map-a-canoe-route).
> I've mapped the portages where one carries the canoe as highway=footpath
> but the water portions of the route do not show up in OSM or OSMAnd. The
> canoe route is the Swan Lake Canoe Trail. There is a portion of it here (
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/60.7101/-150.6839) where one can
> see the footway portions, the portages, but the untagged ways crossing the
> lakes are invisible. The ways are included in my route relation but I'm at
> a loss as to how to tag them so they exist as a part of the route.
> >
> > AFAIK, existing canoe routes use waterway tags to indicate the water
> portions of the routes, e.g., waterway=stream, but the routes I'm working
> on pass through lakes. There is no stream involved, nor is there a footway
> across the lakes.
> >
> > I know I'm raising the specter of tagging for the renderer but if the
> water portions of this route aren't visible or findable, how would a
> routing engine or a GPS make use of them? How should I tag those ways that
> cross the lakes?
>
> I don't know of any specialty map - yet - that does rendering of canoe
> routes. But I'd tag the thing as a route relation, with both waterway=* and
> footway=* segments. route=canoe would make sense, and for many specialty
> maps, it would want to have name, network, and ref. (For ref, for many
> shorter hiking routes, I just use the initials of the trail, and 'lwn'
> [local walking network] for network.
>
> If there's a plan to tag a bunch of these, I bet it would be possible to
> interest Lonvia https://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/help/contact in adding
> a 'canoe' mode to Waymarked Trails, which might very well be the easiest
> path to getting rendered, integrated mapping for it. She already has
> 'hiking', 'cycling', 'riding', 'skating' and 'ski' modes, so I can't
> imagine that 'canoe' would be much harder.
>
> If you're unclear on how to construct a route relation, Northville-Placid
> Trail, which I know you're familiar with since we've corresponded about it,
> is built as one and is fairly simple. It couldn't be a single way, both
> because it's too big and because it shares the way with roads or other
> trails at various points.
> https://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/#route?id=4286650 is the WMT display
> of it (click on the gear at the bottom center of the screen and change the
> base map to Open Topo Map!)  and
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/4286650 is the corresponding
> display in OSM proper.
>
> If you can't find anyone else interested in rendering it, I could maybe
> have a go. I'd use something like
> https://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test4.html?la=43.2910&lo=-74.3641&z=12
> (since that rendering already works) as a basemap, and then overlay your
> routes as heavy lines in some sort of bright colour. But I'd really prefer
> to have it hosted somewhere other than my home office!
>
> I don't think anyone's invented a canoe routing engine, and in general,
> the mind boggles at using a routing engine for a backcountry trip: the trip
> planning is part of the fun! Did you have, instead, a navigation system in
> mind? A lot of systems are capable of reducing a route, or a concatenation
> of route segments, down to a single multiline and telling a GPS,' Follow
> this!" That's different from 'try to find me the most efficient (by some
> metric) route from point A to point B."
>


-- 
Dave Swarthout
Homer, Alaska
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Travel Blog at http://dswarthout.blogspot.com
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