[OSM-talk] Rights of Way

[Nick Whitelegg]

>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.

Yes, OSM does plan to cover them and in fact already does. Most of my 
contributions to OSM are rights of way and unofficial countryside paths. 
So far, a significant part of the New Forest and other countryside areas 
close to Southampton and Winchester are covered, as well as near complete 
coverage of the Petersfield-Midhurst-Haslemere triangle on the 
Hants/Sussex/Surrey border. Other interesting features include partial 
coverage of the main track up Ben Nevis, and soon the entire South Downs 
Way should be there.

>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.

IANAL but I always map the evident path on the ground. A disclaimer on the 
site saying that path information is derived from personal observations 
and is not 100% evidence of the existence of a right of way is I feel 
required. 

Copying the route from an OS or other copyrighted map is a definite no-no. 
I am not sure of the copyright status of the Definitive Maps of the County 
Council, which you can look at by going to the council offices at the 
county capital. I'd be interested to know this, as there are several cases 
where I have, in the absence of evidence on the ground, tagged a path as a 
permissive (non-official) path when it might actually be a right of way. 

Nick