[Talk-GB] Private tracks through a farmyard

[Andy Townsend]

On 22/04/2022 12:53, Martin Wynne wrote:
> I have some sympathy for OS here.

I struggle to share that sympathy.

With a DWG hat on I regularly have conversations with US-based app 
developers who don't understand the somewhat convoluted rules around 
land access in England and Wales, or with German router developers who 
seem surprised that it's not OK to cycle a mountain bike anywhere mapped 
as "highway=path" (e.g. through a Royal Park in London in one 
unfortunate recent example).

The Ordnance Survey cannot claim ignorance of the laws in England and 
Wales (or the Scottish Outdoor access code).  If their map app 
developers (Mapbox was mentioned earlier) failed to cater for it it's 
down to the problems with specification that the OS provided to them.

In this particular instance the approach taken by George Honeywood seems 
beyond reasonable.

As other people have suggested, the correct approach here would be to 
get the ways at https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1hSd re-added (with the 
access=private tags that they had before) so that no-one else will trace 
them from imagery without access tags.  Without that being there an 
Amazon or other similar mapper is quite likely to add it, without access 
tags, which would result in routers not designed to cope with England 
and Wales' land access laws (which is most of them) sending walkers the 
wrong way.

If necessary the DWG can provide that explanation to the farmer here.  
We would suggest that if there is a problem with poorly designed maps or 
apps that the complaint really needs to be directed to the map or app 
developer, not OSM itself.  It is unfortunately common for maps and apps 
to suggest that there is a legal right of access when OSM makes clear 
that there is none.  In this particular instance they may need to talk 
to the OS about some of their other products as well - the OS Explorer 
imagery visible from https://www.bing.com/maps (though not my 2004 paper 
copy) clearly shows https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/822332425/history 
.  If that explanation fails to convince, we can take further action to 
ensure that the OSM data stays correct and avoid it being retraced 
incorrectly as required.

See the "I've seen a problem; what should I do?" section of 
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Data_Working_Group , although George 
has of course done the first part of that (the "contact the mapper" 
part) already.

Best Regards,

Andy (from OSM's Data Working Group)