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I have been recording GPXes for 4 years mainly walked with the Ramblers, we campaign to keep open rights of way in the UK so that's what we walk.I have possibly 4000 miles on HDD,while convalesing I've learnt to upload and edit the map. the question is I can tag a foot path right of way and I know when the trace is road from bing. what I don't know is if the trace is ok for bikes horses or off roaders,In my edits up to now if theirs nothing on map I tag foot or road if Bing looks that way.Some will know I've got it wrong sorry. any ideas? also some rights or way go through crops (cross field paths) they came about when hedge rows and paths were ploughed out farmer are supposed to mark and level them after.They are still legal to use what tag for these

asked 19 Feb '11, 21:00

andy%20mackey's gravatar image

andy mackey
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accept rate: 4%

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I have this trouble as well. I only ever do survey whilst walking. I don't drive, cycle, or horse. Consequently, I don't always know whether a way is suitable for those means of transport (I usually don't join a FP at its start/end, so I miss the signs). I mark these as "highway=footway" because, to me, that's what they are. Trouble is, it gives the impression that the way is forbidden to cycles,motors,horses. I want to say cycle=unknown etc, rather than let the default of "no" obtain.

(26 Jul '11, 12:12) mwbg

First things first - any extra information is good. If you haven't already, I'd definitely upload at least the GPXes that you have. The more traces that there are in a given area the more accurate any added feature is likely to be.

The tricky bit is how to tag them. Taking the physical attributes first, if you're sure that the Bing imagery is up to date for the area that you're adding then you might be able to distinguish road/track/path from that - but there can be problems. For example near me there's something that only a couple of years ago was quite a decent road, but it's not been maintained and after two bad winters you couldn't call it a road any more. My understanding is that some of the Bing images are from Getmapping from around 10 years ago - a lot of things can change in that time. If you can remember what a particular feature was e.g. a dirt track then it makes sense to add it as such.

The other side of the question (access rights) is a tricky one. If you've got a record of e.g. public footpath signs at the beginning of a path then obviously you could add something like "designation=public_footpath". However, if you haven't, and you've only got the information that access must have been at least permissive because you walked there (assuming you weren't on a Mass Trespass!) then I'd leave the access tags off and just tag according to what you're sure of. Other people can easily come along and add information about the legal status (and the path surface, and 1001 other things) later.

Also, if some of your GPX traces coincide with existing mapped tracks then you may be able to align those existing mapped tracks better (to an average of your and other GPS traces, and also using info from e.g. Bing). In some parts of the country there are still extensive paths mapped from old maps such as NPE - your GPS traces are almost certainly going to be more accurate than those.

So add what you've got, and don't worry about not having information for all of the things that in a perfect world you might want to tag - other people can come along and add that later.

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answered 19 Feb '11, 23:07

SomeoneElse's gravatar image

SomeoneElse ♦
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accept rate: 16%

thanks for support, pleased their's been no negative waves

(20 Feb '11, 16:33) andy mackey

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question asked: 19 Feb '11, 21:00

question was seen: 4,142 times

last updated: 26 Jul '11, 12:12

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum