[Talk-us] Mapping rail trails

[joe.sapletal at charter.net]

https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/us-mn-state-metrogis-trans-metro-colabtiv-trails-bike


Someone could go nuts with this data from MN.

Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com> 
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2019 11:15 AM
To: Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>
Cc: talk-us <talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails

On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 10:50 AM Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:
> OSM was founded in 2004 on the principle of "if they won't give us the 
> data, we'll make it ourselves" and that still holds true. I've started 
> on making sure all rail-trails of a reasonable length (say, 5 miles
> upwards) are actually mapped in OSM, using route relations.
 [...]
> So why not have a go? It's easy work and you get to see the routes 
> appear on http://cycling.waymarkedtrails.org pretty much instantly.

Yes, please!

I try to do my part locally. I'm a hiker rather than a cyclist, so that affects what gets mapped, but I also watch what other people are mapping around here and try to repair the relations when they get messed up. People keep beating me to it, though;
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6133160 got done before I made it down there. Repairing the relations when someone inadvertently conflated https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1738631 with
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2692590 was quite a chore! (I found out about that one because 'Genesee Valley Greenway' showed up in my neighbourhood, near Albany and nowhere near the Genesee Valley.)

I have never tried to import data on rail-trails, or indeed any other sort of trail. Not only are the external data sources frequently subject to aggressive copyright enforcement, but also they are frequently of abysmal data quality. I map this stuff with literal boots on the literal ground. (I *have* been known to use the external data sets as a "to do" list. I'm comfortable with that level of external dependency. Some of the hardliners here would say that once I've consulted such a data set, I'm permanently mentally contaminated and can't map the features that it shows, but that way lies madness!)

There are too few of us. I keep seeing the same half-dozen names locally. More would be welcome.

And route relations are important for sites like Waymarked Trails - it totally ignores walking and cycling routes that are not indicated with relations, which is why I wind up doing routes for even relatively trivial stuff like https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/4836600.(although that certainly meets Richard's five-mile threshold).

To reiterate: yes, please help!

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