[talk-au] Paths in Illawarra Conservation Lands

[Andrew Harvey]

On Thu, 12 Sep 2019 at 17:29, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> "Come for a serious bushwalk or a casual jog, visit a lookout in the
> winter for whale watching off the coast, or break out the binoculars for
> birdwatching. There are cycling opportunities on fire trails and plenty
> of chances to cool off in summer by retreating to a rainforest track."
>

The way I read that this is cycling is only permitted on fire trails
(highway=track), not single path tracks (highway=footway/path). If that's
the case I think it's fine to add bicycle=no to all paths, unless anyone
with local knowledge knows better.

Would "serious bushwalk" be a term that NPWS could be using for walking
> only along pre-established trails, or is this a clear invitation to walk
> wherever you want?
>

They would only be promoting on track walking, but it's quite common for
people to walk where there is no track which is fine. When there's a track
they don't want people to use it's common for NPWS to put up signage saying
the area is closed for remediation, etc. ie. access=no.


> > In my opinion paths signposted or otherwise for walking should be
> > foot=designated to indicate there is signage saying this path is
> > explicitly for walking.
>
> That makes sense.
>
> > Any path they want people not to use
> > they'd need to put sinage and we'd tag as access=no
>
> That too, though if they were to say "mountainbiking on designated paths
> only", we might consider tagging all non-designated paths with
> cycling=no - that's essentially the old question of whether defaults
> should be tagged.
>

Exactly, it does come down to tagging defaults or not. By default I'd
assume any highway=path in a national park or SCA to be bicycle=no unless
signposted as it being allowed and tagged as =yes or =designated, but so
far I've only been tagging ones as =no when I encounter signage. I'm not
too fussed, mapping a default bicycle=no seems sensible to me.

Either way even if both foot=no and bicycle=no, the path can and should
still be mapped in my opinion, if for nothing else but for aiding
conservation efforts so we can keep track of unsanctioned tracks, closed
tracks and their regeneration status. After all OSM is a database of
geospatial data, the map on osm.org is for contributors to help map...


>
> > and any other path
> > with no sigage would be somewhere in the grey area between access=no and
> > access=designated (which I always saw access=yes as that middle ground
> tag).
>
> In my opinion a foot=yes, while not necessarily indicating that there is
> a sign, is more than a grey-area assumption. It is an assurance given by
> the mapper to others that "it is ok and legal to walk here", based
> perhaps not on signage but on local rules and customs.


> I would not use foot=yes for "well there is a path here and I've walked
> along it but I'm not sure what would have happened had I met a ranger".
>

+1 Fair point.
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