[Talk-us] OSM US Trails Working Group

Fri Oct 8 18:45:48 UTC 2021

I mostly agree with Tod's analysis of the problem. I'd also suggest that as
a hiker, I really want my map to show all trails, but I do want to
distinguish types of trail. Having a social trail show as such on the
map—possibly with additional notation if closed per land manager--is rather
helpful if you get to the intersection with said social trail and are
trying to figure out whether or not you're actually at the next (or prior)
intersection with an official trail, but signage happens to be missing.

Anecdotally, I ran into a related situation in which I managed to get
myself off an official trail and onto a private trail (which crossed
private land and before getting to the road). I added said private trail,
with access=permissive, as there was no signage and the trail clearly had
some small level of traffic. AllTrails picked it up, and the landowner
contacted me not long after and asked me to remove it from the map (which I
did, after confirming that access=private wasn't going to make him happy).
He did add signage to better direct traffic to continue on the official
trail, but I think the situation illustrates the problematic intersection
between the OSM "map what's on the ground" practice and the ways the data
sometimes gets used.

I've also seen discussions that this is a pervasive problem in indigenous
lands, where trails that are on non-public land and thus legally only open
to tribal members and invited guests get pulled into hiking-trail sites and
not clearly marked as private. Again, accurate tagging (particularly
access=private) could be helpful, but only if any other data users adjust
their treatment of the data (rendering, generated trail listings, etc)
accordingly.

On Fri, Oct 8, 2021 at 2:36 PM Tod Fitch <tod at fitchfamily.org> wrote:

> I am a bit miffed that this discussion will be on Slack. OSM has way too
> many ways for discussions to be hidden from the typical mapper (should this
> be on one of a huge number of mail lists, on the help website, the forum
> website, slack, or ???). I guess I will need to join the OSM US Slack group
> as this topic is of interest to me.
>
> For background, in addition to being an amateur mapper I am a volunteer
> with the US Forest Service and I make hiking maps with OSM data being one
> of the sources. Most of my USFS volunteer work is with an emergency
> response group so I have had quite a few joint training sessions with
> various SAR teams over the years.
>
> In my experience there is quite a gulf between the desires and resources
> available to the entities involved. In a nutshell:
>
> 1. OSM’s philosophy is to “map what is on the ground”.
> 2. The land manager’s need to protect and preserve natural resources.
> 3. The land manager’s desire to nudge people away from dangerous
> situations.
> 4. A search team’s need to know all the places a missing person might have
> gone and the ways those areas can be accessed.
> 5. The companies and/or projects that create the actual maps or apps are
> not under the control of OSM or the land managers.
>
> OSM’s philosophy encourages mapping of informal or social trails. But
> those trails may go through sensitive habitats or downright dangerous
> areas. If a trail is mapped in OSM some hiking app will show the trail. If
> the trail is shown on a hiking app then people will use it. That is not a
> good thing as it can do permanent damage or get people killed. But SAR
> teams want and need a map that shows everything in order to be effective in
> searches.
>
> I suspect the partial solution is to come up with a tagging scheme that
> the land managers can assure is enforced on their land. This will require
> them to monitor changesets affecting their land and to fix them as needed
> to fit the agreed upon tagging. Note that they can’t just remove the trails
> as some mapper somewhere will add it back in. The next step would be to get
> the projects and companies that make hiking maps and apps for the general
> public agree to de-emphasize these trails in some way. In the extreme case
> just not show them. In a less extreme case show them but in a way that is
> less prominent than the official trails. Finally, projects like SarTopo
> that produce maps and apps targeted to SAR teams would show these trails.
>
> But there is no way that any of this can be mandated or forced given the
> current structure of things. Which leads to my final thought: In addition
> to OSM mappers and land managers discussing this there should be
> representatives of the major hiking apps involved.
>
> Cheers,
> Tod
>
>
> On Oct 8, 2021, at 9:55 AM, Mike Thompson <miketho16 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In OSM we map what is actually on the ground, not what someone would like
> to be on the ground.  We are like "spatial journalists", and like
> journalists, we report (map) the facts (does the US Government try to tell
> the NY Times what to publish? Only in extreme circumstances.).  There will
> always be those who claim that the "facts are dangerous" and therefore
> should not be reported, and I am sure one can find isolated cases where
> this is true (this is not limited to trails or OSM, it seems that every few
> months there is a story of someone in their Honda Civic (e.g.) taking a
> "shortcut" that appears on their navigation app as a 4x4 road that only a
> rock crawler could traverse - no substitute for common sense).   But more
> often than not, the danger is to the particular group that desires these
> facts be suppressed.
>
> If there really is a problem, land managers can post signs "no off trail
> use", "not a trail", etc., and enforce such.
>
> I have talked to a number of search and rescue people that actually use
> OSM because it does contain so called "social trails."  It may also help
> legal land users remain safe.  A few years ago there were a number of
> deaths on Capitol Peak in Colorado because hikers had gotten off route.  I
> and another mapper added the "trail" to the peak to OSM (note, not NPS
> land).
>
> In addition, my experience with the NPS trail data is that it is often in
> error, and they refuse to fix it, and even acknowledge that it could be
> wrong.
>
> Finally, removing this valuable content from OSM will not achieve the ends
> the NPS and others want to achieve as it appears independently in a number
> of apps.
>
> Mike
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 8, 2021 at 10:30 AM Zeke Farwell <ezekielf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Recently a number of us attended the "Mappy Hour" presentation "Trails
>> in OpenStreetMap <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXXGkBVJK-o>" by Keri
>> Nelson of the National Park Service.  Keri described the damages our public
>> land managers are seeing from visitors following informal/social trails and
>> non-trail routes shown on popular hiking maps that use OpenStreetMap data
>> such as AllTrails, CalTopo, and GaiaGPS.
>>
>> This has initiated a public discussion on the OSM US slack
>> <https://slack.openstreetmap.us/>  #trails channel
>> <https://osmus.slack.com/archives/C1US5SFUH> on how to better support
>> responsible recreation through OpenStreetMap.  OSM US is also forming a
>> trails working group focused on these issues.  The group is made up of OSM
>> mappers, trail map providers, and land managers.  The first meeting is next
>> Wednesday 10/13.  Anyone who is interested in helping resolve these issues
>> is welcome to join the discussion on slack
>> <https://slack.openstreetmap.us/>, and/or contact Maggie Crawley
>> <maggie at openstreetmap.us> to participate in the working group meetings.
>> We have also started a United States Trail Access wiki page
>> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States/Trail_Access_Project>
>> to document this effort.
>>
>> --
>> Zeke Farwell
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-- 
Kevin Broderick
ktb at kevinbroderick.com
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