[Talk-GB] Public Rights of Way

[Nick Whitelegg]

>So hopefully you can see where I'm going with this. I want to represent 
>ways with a legitimate ?foot=yes? tag. In the absence of signposts, in 
>practice the guide for UK walkers is the OS map, but if I walk a route 
>which I believe follows the OS map for the purposes of a GPS trace, is 
>this not using derived-data? Many people will walk round field-edges 
>where they find the PROW blocked by impenetrable crops ? but the 
>arbitray nature of this clearly makes it unsuitable for OSM. If you 
>don't map bits of a footpath because of lack of signposts, then 
>foot-routes between villages etc lose their function as a route, and 
>become disconnected isolated snippets of path, which seems to me pretty 
>pointless mapping.

Luckily in my part of the world (Hampshire) the paths are fairly well 
signposted, but if I'm not 100% sure, I just guess. If you were to use to 
OS map to work out the route of the path it would (I believe, but I'm not 
a lawyer) be derived data if you could not back it up with evidence on the 
ground.

The most common case in my experience is a long, slightly curved field. In 
these cases my gps trace is often a complete mess as I search for the 
correct exit route from the field. In the absence of definitive evidence I 
end up just joining the stiles/gates at the field entrance/exit with a 
straight line. Not ideal, but we have to make do with this. The landowner 
can then always contact us and tell us our maps are wrong and we can act 
accordingly.

In the "overgrown with crops" case, yes in practice you do have to follow 
the field-edge, but the OSM map must map the "real" path, so you'll again 
have to draw a straight line between entrance and exit as if you did cross 
the crop. 

Also I would strongly recommend not using "foot=yes". The meaning of "yes" 
has become very ambiguous as people use it for different things. If it's a 
right of way, use "foot=designated". If it's a permissive route, where the 
landowner has informally allowed walkers onto the path, use 
"foot=permissive". If it's a path which you know is a right of way via an 
Ordnance Survey map, but cannot verify that on the ground, again you must 
use foot=permissive even if that's not true. This is because you can't 
verify the right of way status from a non copyright source.
A "local", someone who has known for 20 years that it's a right of way, 
can then come along and tag it correctly later.

Nick