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I am trying to update trails in my area for horseback riding. I have updated many area trails to horse=designated to reflect signage. The only site I can find to easily view horse riding trails is riding.waymarkedtrails.org which only shows horse routes, so most of the trails I updated do not show up. Now I am trying to figure out how to appropriately use routes relations for horseback riding in the USA. A nearby rail trail is 26km of linear trail, all of which allows equestrian use. That should obviously be a named horse route (and now is). But the nearby state park has many trail segments designated for horse use but disjointed, connected many different ways by park roads. The park does not have any designated or named "routes" for horses, and there are endless combinations. I could make each trail segment a route, but then the list becomes populated with tons of little segments, often less than a mile. That doesn't seem very useful. I could make all the segments in one park into one route, but how do I order them if they are disjoint? Any connections I select would be quite arbitrary. Any resulting elevation profile would be virtually useless. Or maybe I need to work on waymarkedtrails.org to add support for viewing horse=designated tags as well? Suggestions appreciated! |
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Only actually designated route (ie, has signs forming a cogent route) should be using a route relation, and one relation per route, not all routes in a single relation. Sounds like you're looking for a renderer that indicates horse=designated. Don't break things by tagging to make something appear in a specific renderer. Ok, so it sounds like I could make a signed trail of a park into a horse route, but some of them would end up fairly insignificant. For example one park near me has a horse trail which makes an important connection, but I think it is only 2km long. But other trails which are perhaps 8km could reasonably be added. But better yet would be to get a better renderer for USA equine users...
(15 Feb '23, 02:34)
RideAndDrive...
Oh, as another puzzler: The Great Allegheny Passage is a 300 mile hike/bike route across Pennsylvania that definitely qualifies as a "route" for most purposes. But there are only 3 small and disjoint sections that permit horse use! Is it a route? 3 routes? Argh.
(15 Feb '23, 02:40)
RideAndDrive...
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I had tried something like this a few years ago without success, see here. I hope you will have more luck; that would be very useful in Europe, too. |
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I think that there are two parts to this - one is something that shows waymarked routes designed for horse traffic (you've mentioned riding.waymarkedtrails.org already), but the other is simply showing a map from a horse rider's point of view - for example, show "private" or "public" based on the assumption that the user is on horseback not in a car. In addition, similar to the way that many maps for cyclists show roads and tracks more suitable for cycle traffic as more prominent, and some maps for hikers maps show less suitable paths and tracks less prominently, it would absolutely be possible to do the same for horse traffic. Openstreetmap has a tag horse_scale which is designed to show the suitability of a path or track for horse traffic. Looking at consumers of that tag at taginfo, one map is suggested. That doesn't cover the USA though. Maybe people can think of others? Editing to address the further point raised: Pretty much all of the maps created to show OSM data (and certainly all of the interesting ones) were created by volunteers, in many cases because they were fed up of waiting for someone else to create the thing that they wanted. That might not be you right now, but unfortunately if it isn't we can't really predict when someone will do it :) |
Are these primarily or only for horse riding? If so they might be what are tagged as
highway=bridlewayin some jurisdictions·These are typically state "shared use" trails, which means they may be used for hiking, horses, skiing, and sometimes bicycles and/or snowmobiles. I definitely do not think bridleway is a good description.
I appreciate the input. I think what I take from this is that if a trail is significant enough for the state to have named it and posted signs, there is probably a valid argument that it could be made a horse route even if relatively short (though this might not be the optimal handling).
The second takeaway is that we need a better renderer for horse usage in the USA, as I think our situation is different from much of Europe. While most of where I ride hardly needs the horse_scale, it could be useful for some riders. I'm not committed enough to undertake creating a renderer. Perhaps I will suggest enhancements to waymarkedtrails.org.
Thank you!
Regretfully it sounds like they have no interest whatsoever in making the site immensely more useful. That's very disappointing.
Perhaps someone will someday create a "fully featured riding map". I have other things I'd like to do with the remainder of my life ;)