[Talk-GB] Public Rights of Way - legal vs reality

[Andy Townsend]

On 05/05/2020 11:53, Adam Snape wrote:
> Hi Tom,
>
> I'd consider this particular proposed use of highway=no to mean "there 
> is a public highway here but there's no visible path on the ground" to 
> be a somewhat country-specific and counter-intuitive tagging practice. 
> It's certainly being suggested here as a solution to a 
> country-specific issue regarding the mapping of England and Wales' 
> rights of way network.

For the avoidance of doubt, we already have "trail_visibility" as a 
useful tag here.  It's well used worldwide 
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/trail_visibility#values and in 
the UK https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org.uk/keys/trail_visibility#values 
and I (at least) use it to decide whether to render a path or not.

That said, I'd be reluctant to use any other highway tag other than "no" 
when there is a legal right of way but (say) someone's built a house 
there so there is no physical access.  By all means add 
"designation=public_footpath" (with some sort of note) but please not 
"highway=footway" (my apologies if no-one was suggesting this - it 
wasn't 100% clear in the conversation).

Personally I'd tend to just omit the highway tag for cases like this.  I 
wouldn't personally have a problem with people using "highway=no" for 
them but I take Andy Allan's point earlier, and he has far more 
experience dealing with how data consumers misuse OSM tags than I.

On the "country specific" bit England and Wales are pretty unique with 
their "public footpaths" etc.  More civilised countries (like Scotland) 
have something like "allemansrätten" in law. :)

Best Regards,

Andy