[OSM-talk] Relation/Routes and Hikes in open Country

[Mike Harris]

This is complicated - but in principle I would support mapping something
that is there - and used - on the ground, regardless of whether or not it is
"official". Indeed the definition of "official" will vary greatly from
country to country and may not even be obvious.

I agree that non-official organisations may be much better than official
ones at maintaining (and mapping!) off-road routes ... whether cycle or on
foot.

In the UK we have a very elaborate and complex legal system around the whole
issue of "public rights of way" (whether pedestrian, bicycle or equestrian)
and the options for tagging these (in the UK) have been widely discussed in
this newsgroup. More importantly, perhaps, in relation to your message ...
We have a very large number of routes that are actually named as
long-distance walking or cycling routes and are often promoted by (and
sometimes even in part maintained by the official bodies) but include
segments that are not public rights of way at all but are of a permissive or
customary nature. I have a major and much-used medium-distance walking route
a few km from home (the sg. "Sandstone Trail") that is a mixture of public
rights of way of various kinds, permissive and customary segments over which
the public has no right of passage, plus sections of public roads. Yet it is
widely promoted by the authorities to promote tourism in the region. It
would seem perverse not to map this - and it would also seem appropriate to
map it is a route relation. The individual sections can then be tagged with
whatever seems appropriate for each.

Hope this is pragmatic and a little bit helpful!

Mike Harris

-----Original Message-----
From: BEHRING Carsten [mailto:Carsten.BEHRING at efsa.europa.eu] 
Sent: 06 May 2009 18:44
To: talk at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Relation/Routes and Hikes in open Country

I enter a bit late in this discussion. But this was the only place I found
which discussed the issued of the "nonoffical" 
routes, because I would like to do the same, so a kind of "sharing  of
unoffical cycling routes." with OSM.

I have a kind of mixed feeling about this. One one side I understand that
the fundamental data of the OSM data base should be based on "verifiable
facts on the ground" but on the other side there are some use cases which
the current OSM data base does not (officialy) address.

The first one is exactly the question of "unoffical" route proposals. I find
it very covinient and logical to create my "private routes" as relations in
JOSM by assmembling them from existing ways, such as any normal relation.
But I agree that we should use special tagging for it, so that "by default"
they do not appear on an offical map. But I would like to be able to "link
to them" somehow or enable them.

And it is true that the questions about when does a route changes from
"subjective" to "objective" is quite tricky to decide.

Are the requirements for making a route "objective" are really needed and a
clear criteria of adding a route to the OSM database, such as:
- marked on the ground
- maintained and supported by an organisation

This factors can change over time, so maybe the province stops maintaing a
certain route, so the signs get invisble, the maps disappear. Should we then
remove it from OSM ?
(Or think about the future in which everyboddy has a GPS with OSM maps, so
"marking" of routes is not needed any more ...)

Maybe an individual person can "maintain" a route better then an
organisation (even by just maintaining a web site with up-to-date
information)


I am not sure if the existing tags such as "operated by" are a good
mechanism or not to diffenciate this.

Maybe it would be just easier to simply use a tag such as "marked=no"
which simply says if or if not we consider a route to follow the rules of
"verifiable on the ground" or not and the renderes by default ignore them.


Regards,

Carsten 



 


>> I'd define it slightly differently - its do we want *subjective* 
>> routes in OSM? I don't think anyone is arguing that notable
>> *objective* routes, like the Pennine Way in the UK or the Appalachian 
>> Way in the US can certainly be included as a route.
>>
>
> Hi all,
> I'm going to be a bit provocative here, please bear with me....
>
> 1) At what point does a route change from being 'subjective' to
'objective'?
> 2) 'Open Street Map is a map of everything'.
> 3) 'Your map, your way'.
>
>
> I understand the concern that we don't want the official map to be 
> saturated with additional non-official (whatever that means) routes, 
> however I don't think that it is a reason to prevent
people/organisations
> adding there own relation/routes to the data base.
>
> At present the offical map does not render the relation/routes, when
it
> does it can limit the ones it shows by using the operator and/or
network
> tags.
>
> In the case of Bob Spirko, there is a huge resource of write-up and
photos
> on his website. I believe that it is a benefit to add this information
to
> the OSM database and (in my opinion) relation routes are the best way
to
> do this. The first batch of trails are actually based around those 
> published in a book, does this make them 'objective'?
>
> For OSM this get us additional ways on the ground, showing footpaths
and
> tracks on the ground. The use of relations removes the surplus naming
of
> ways (ie. a footpath would not have to be tagged 'Anderson Peak Trail'
for
> example) and other marking of non-physical things.
>
> For Bob Spirko (or whomever) it gives the ability to render maps
showing
> his routes (which can be done offline with osmarender or some other
> scheme) or to make GPS compilations for navigation.
>


I've not got much problem with "notable" subjective routes being stored in
the database. Obviously "notable" is a vague moving target, but what I mean
here is that it's not a completely arbitrary concoction that no-one else has
ever heard of. If we have a well known person writing books on walks etc
then I see no problem in adding these to the DB.

The problem is how you add them.

A route relation, as in type=route, route=foot, has so far implied a signed,
"official" route. This is what is being referred to as an objective route --
the key feature is generally that it is maintained by someone (the
operator). For the subjective routes where someone has gone and looked for a
nice walk, wrote it down and published it, this probably isn't the case. I'd
rather the former weren't diluted by the latter, with no easy way to
distinguish them.

What I'd suggest is that you just change some of the tag names:
   type=suggested_route
   route=foot
   suggested_by=Bob Spirko

Then everyone knows where they stand, and what this represents.
I'm sure there are people convinced this is a bad idea... and if the goal is
to avoid conversations about what is considered "notable" then I'd probably
take their point.

Dave


 
Carsten Behring
Software Development Manager

Information Technology and Operations

	
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