Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
Am 24. Juni 2019 19:18:26 MESZ schrieb Greg Troxel : >One wonders how RTC squares this decision with their legal obligation >to >act in the public interest. Not sharing data at all to get "related >income" to fund their operation is one thing, but sharing with Google >while not with OSM seems hard to defend. > ... That would seem to imply that Google got the data for free, I don't believe that is something we actually know. -- Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Mobiltelefon mit Kaiten Mail gesendet. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/us-mn-state-metrogis-trans-metro-colabtiv-trails-bike Someone could go nuts with this data from MN. Joe -Original Message- From: Kevin Kenny Sent: Monday, June 24, 2019 11:15 AM To: Richard Fairhurst Cc: talk-us Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 10:50 AM Richard Fairhurst wrote: > OSM was founded in 2004 on the principle of "if they won't give us the > data, we'll make it ourselves" and that still holds true. I've started > on making sure all rail-trails of a reasonable length (say, 5 miles > upwards) are actually mapped in OSM, using route relations. [...] > So why not have a go? It's easy work and you get to see the routes > appear on http://cycling.waymarkedtrails.org pretty much instantly. Yes, please! I try to do my part locally. I'm a hiker rather than a cyclist, so that affects what gets mapped, but I also watch what other people are mapping around here and try to repair the relations when they get messed up. People keep beating me to it, though; https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6133160 got done before I made it down there. Repairing the relations when someone inadvertently conflated https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1738631 with https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2692590 was quite a chore! (I found out about that one because 'Genesee Valley Greenway' showed up in my neighbourhood, near Albany and nowhere near the Genesee Valley.) I have never tried to import data on rail-trails, or indeed any other sort of trail. Not only are the external data sources frequently subject to aggressive copyright enforcement, but also they are frequently of abysmal data quality. I map this stuff with literal boots on the literal ground. (I *have* been known to use the external data sets as a "to do" list. I'm comfortable with that level of external dependency. Some of the hardliners here would say that once I've consulted such a data set, I'm permanently mentally contaminated and can't map the features that it shows, but that way lies madness!) There are too few of us. I keep seeing the same half-dozen names locally. More would be welcome. And route relations are important for sites like Waymarked Trails - it totally ignores walking and cycling routes that are not indicated with relations, which is why I wind up doing routes for even relatively trivial stuff like https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/4836600.(although that certainly meets Richard's five-mile threshold). To reiterate: yes, please help! ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
Richard Fairhurst writes: > Hi all, > > You might remember that back in March I wondered whether we could get > access to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's data, which they've given > to Google: > > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2019-March/019266.html > > Helpful people on this list followed that up with RTC (thank > you!). Finally the answer has come back and it's no. The data is > apparently "free as in Google" - sadly RTC aren't interested in having > their trails appear in basically every single cycling app which uses > OSM data. > > (In completely unconnected news, I note that RTC currently sells > "TrailLink Unlimited" mapping for $29.99/year.) Thanks for pushing on this and telling us what the results were. One wonders how RTC squares this decision with their legal obligation to act in the public interest. Not sharing data at all to get "related income" to fund their operation is one thing, but sharing with Google while not with OSM seems hard to defend. My impression is that for many of the US rail trails, perhaps most of them, RTC has no real involvement (in ownership or construction), so "their trails" is perhaps "the set of trails that are in their database". Agreed that making OSM the better database is the only good trail forward. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 10:50 AM Richard Fairhurst wrote: > OSM was founded in 2004 on the principle of "if they won't give us the > data, we'll make it ourselves" and that still holds true. I've started > on making sure all rail-trails of a reasonable length (say, 5 miles > upwards) are actually mapped in OSM, using route relations. [...] > So why not have a go? It's easy work and you get to see the routes > appear on http://cycling.waymarkedtrails.org pretty much instantly. Yes, please! I try to do my part locally. I'm a hiker rather than a cyclist, so that affects what gets mapped, but I also watch what other people are mapping around here and try to repair the relations when they get messed up. People keep beating me to it, though; https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6133160 got done before I made it down there. Repairing the relations when someone inadvertently conflated https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1738631 with https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2692590 was quite a chore! (I found out about that one because 'Genesee Valley Greenway' showed up in my neighbourhood, near Albany and nowhere near the Genesee Valley.) I have never tried to import data on rail-trails, or indeed any other sort of trail. Not only are the external data sources frequently subject to aggressive copyright enforcement, but also they are frequently of abysmal data quality. I map this stuff with literal boots on the literal ground. (I *have* been known to use the external data sets as a "to do" list. I'm comfortable with that level of external dependency. Some of the hardliners here would say that once I've consulted such a data set, I'm permanently mentally contaminated and can't map the features that it shows, but that way lies madness!) There are too few of us. I keep seeing the same half-dozen names locally. More would be welcome. And route relations are important for sites like Waymarked Trails - it totally ignores walking and cycling routes that are not indicated with relations, which is why I wind up doing routes for even relatively trivial stuff like https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/4836600.(although that certainly meets Richard's five-mile threshold). To reiterate: yes, please help! ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
Hi all, You might remember that back in March I wondered whether we could get access to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's data, which they've given to Google: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2019-March/019266.html Helpful people on this list followed that up with RTC (thank you!). Finally the answer has come back and it's no. The data is apparently "free as in Google" - sadly RTC aren't interested in having their trails appear in basically every single cycling app which uses OSM data. (In completely unconnected news, I note that RTC currently sells "TrailLink Unlimited" mapping for $29.99/year.) I find this a great shame as someone who loves cycling rail-trails - mostly over here in the UK, but I've ridden a few in the US: we don't have any single structure as cool as the Walkway over the Hudson, so I had to do that when I was at SOTM-US a couple of years ago! So... let's do it ourselves. OSM was founded in 2004 on the principle of "if they won't give us the data, we'll make it ourselves" and that still holds true. I've started on making sure all rail-trails of a reasonable length (say, 5 miles upwards) are actually mapped in OSM, using route relations. Often the trails are in there as ways, but no relation has been created. Sometimes a trail has been extended on the ground from when it was originally mapped. Other times there'll be a trail relation for a longer route (e.g. a USBRS route) of which this forms part, but not for the named trail itself. If we get the basic trail data in OSM, so the trails show prominently in apps and other renderings, then that will encourage cyclists to use OSM and then add the detailed info (surface, facilities, trailheads, connecting paths etc.) that is best acquired by survey. I've had a quick blast through several states so far (AR, IA, ID, IN, MA, MD, ME, MT, NE, PA, RI, SD, WA, WV, WY, plus a little bit of work in CA and OH). I may of course have missed some trails. I've been creating route relations with route=bicycle, network=lcn, and an appropriate name tag: I'm not a great fan of making up abbreviations for the ref= tag but if that floats your boat, go for it. So why not have a go? It's easy work and you get to see the routes appear on http://cycling.waymarkedtrails.org pretty much instantly. (Obviously don't copy any information from RTC's website or similar. Most trails have their own websites: factual statements on those sites can almost certainly be used as fair use.) cheers Richard ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
