[Talk-GB] National Trust Paths organised edit page

[Andy Townsend]

On 02/09/2019 16:57, Mark Goodge wrote:
> I'm a little puzzled by one of the lines on the permissions grid on 
> that page. There's a line for "Legal RoW but access discouraged", with 
> a suggested tagging of "discouraged/private" for pedestrians (and 
> similar tags for other users).
>
> Quite apart from the fact that "private" is simply wrong for any 
> public right of way, the use of "discouraged" for pedestrian users 
> seems to me to also conflict with the wiki, which suggests that this 
> is a functional tag (the wiki example is HGV traffic on narrow roads). 

I suspect that the issues that they're trying to deal with here are:

  * Rights of way such as byways open to all traffic that have traffic
    regulation orders on them because they are currently not navigable.
    I've certainly seen example where a PRoW was closed to foot, horse
    and vehicle traffic even though it likely wasn't the walkers doing
    the damage.

  * Paths in moorland (where here it _is_ the walkers doing the damage),
    perhaps in CROW act areas, that need to be closed temporarily to
    allow heather etc. to regrow.

> But public rights of way come in all shapes and sizes, from broad, 
> well-maintained paths to barely visible routes across difficult 
> terrain. If we want to tag their relative ease of use, then surely a 
> more appropriate tag than "discouraged" should be used. If a right of 
> way on foot exists, then it is, ultimately, up to the user whether 
> they use it or not.

Indeed - but from reading what the NT have said I don't think they're 
opposed to tagging of surface, trail_visibility etc. to enable people to 
make their own mind up.

(as an aside https://map.atownsend.org.uk/ does look at various subtags 
on non-PRoWs and won't show some paths on that basis)

>
> The reason why I'm uneasy with this here, is that it relates to 
> similar concerns already expressed by Frederik Ramm. There's quite a 
> lot of NT property which is crossed by public rights of way, but that 
> the NT would prefer people not to use as they provide a route onto the 
> property that bypasses the "official" entrance. I can understand why 
> they'd want to do that, but I don't think it's appropriate to reflect 
> that in how the paths are mapped in OSM.

Indeed, but I think we'd need an example where that was happening?  I've 
often found myself inside an NT property "by accident" via a PRoW that 
doesn't go through a main entrance, but can't remember ever remember 
being prevented from using it or even "persuaded not to".  The exception 
is where big for-pay events are held and PRoWs are temporarily closed - 
a non-NT example of that I can think of is Chatsworth Country Fair.

Best Regards,

Andy


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