[OSM-talk] Rights of Way

[Andy Armstrong]

Sorry if I've missed discussion on this - I can't recall any certainly.

Someone on a mountain biking forum has just asked me if OSM has plans  
to cover footpath and bridleways (which in the UK are legal rights of  
way). I said (without checking...) that I thought they'd be covered  
eventually but that not much had been done so far.

As I typed that it occurred to me that, unlike roads, off road rights  
of way don't always take the same course on the ground as they do on  
the map - that's to say that the de-facto right of way might not be  
the same as the legal one. For example paths move due to erosion,  
farming, to skirt round bogs. In some cases the path on the O/S map  
is just a straight line joining two known endpoints and the actual  
path on the ground is either non-existent or bears little relation to  
the map.

That begs the question what are we actually mapping in that  
situation? The path everyone uses or the  path on the map in the  
Rights of Way office? If we map the path on the ground we're mapping  
a way that may not be strictly legal - but the only way you could  
follow the legal route would be to load the route from the  
authoritative map into a GPS before setting off - which is obviously  
problematic from a copyright point of view.

-- 
Andy Armstrong, hexten.net