[Talk-us-massachusetts] Trails on private land

[Greg Troxel]

"Alan & Ruth Bragg" <alan.ruth.bragg at gmail.com> writes:

> I had a chance encounter with Steve Tobin of the Carlise Trails
> Committee yesterday.  We got to discussing town trial maps and he
> pointed out that he couldn't publish a map for the town that included
> trails on private land.

I can certainly believe such a constraint, but I think it's more
complicated than that.  Sometimes there are trails on conservation
easements.

Also, sometimes there are trails on land owned by a conservation trust,
where the public has permission to walk, but not a legal right of
access.  We tag that foot=yes, even though technically it's
  foot=private, permission_to_all=yes
because that's too complicated for no good reason and it amounts to the
same thing for the "Can I walk here" question.

> My suggestion is that those trails be tagged access=private.

That's only OK if it's accurate.  Sometimes it should be
access=permissive.  Sometimes there is an easement and access=yes (or
foot=yes, really) is accurate.  We need to keep the tagging accurate and
not tag for the thing that chooses whether to include it in the map.

> The cartographic tool used to create the maps could either ignore private
> trails or render them in a way that indicates they are private.

OK in general, but then we should really be tagging the thing that these
renderers care about explicitly.  It could be that there is a polygon
that has leisure=nature_reserve (and landuse=conservation :-) and
perhaps that should have some affirmative public tag that the renderer
looks for.

Perhaps we can accurately tag access=private (for trails on land for
which the general public does not have broad permission and it's believed
that the landowner would object) or access=permissive (for trails where
the public does not really have permission but that it's generally
understood that the landowner doesn't object).

Then map makers can exclude one or both.  But we should be careful that
it's not strictly about "private" land, and not go down the path of
putting in access=private if someone wants to exclude it from some map,
separately from what's really true.  I know you didn't suggest that, but
this is tricky business.

Greg


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