[Talk-us] California Coastal Trail

[Tod Fitch]

There is an effort to create a trail system, the “California Coastal Trail” (CCT), along the California coast. [1][2].  I have seen a few sections of the trail up north by Crescent City and now there is one by me in Southern California.

I was slow to notice it, but a change set [3] renamed the local beach trail near my house. There is no signage on the local trail indicating that it is part of this system and, as far as I can tell, the city still is sole owner/operator of the trail. In particular the existing signage reflects the previous OSM name. That change set also extended the trail south and routed the extension halfway up the side of a cliff but that is another matter (the fairly popular way that people go through that area seems like it is part of an active railway line so it is not clear to me if that section is official, I think the official way is to walk in the sand along the beach). Obviously I have some fixing to do here.

My reading of the coastal trail information and knowing the signage and actual operator (local city) of the trail near me leads me to think that the CCT should be mapped as a route relation leaving the local trail names as they were. Looking at OSM data for the sections of the CCT that I am aware of, I see no route relation at present. And I see a number of trails where the history shows a local name being overwritten with the CCT name.

Am I off base in thinking the local name(s) should be kept and that the CCT should be setup as a route relation? It seems to be the same type of system as the Arizona Trail, or the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) as listed on the wiki’s page about long distance trails. [4]

Any objection to me starting a hiking route relation for this system? This would be a very long trail, should it be setup in sections like the PCT or be a single relation like the Arizona Trail?

I am not sure I am up to building a route relation for the whole state but I can certainly do it for the sections near me that I can verify.

Thank you for your thoughts on this!

—Tod

[1] https://scc.ca.gov/projects/california-coastal-trail/
[2] https://www.coastal.ca.gov/access/ca-coastal-trail/coastal-trail.html
[3] https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/105706564
[4] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States/Long_distance_trails
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20210905/afe0978a/attachment.sig>