(I'm a little late to this thread, but wanted to add my two cents.) I agree with Tom's take and have commented below:
On Mon, 25 Sept 2023, 8:26 am Tom Brennan, <[email protected]> wrote: > Tricky one. > > I have sympathy for Land Managers. There can be many reasons why they > don't want people visiting a place, and why they don't want tracks on a > map which might encourage it. > > But simply deleting the tracks from OSM is not the best way to go about > it unless the "tracks" were simply bushbashing routes, and were never > real tracks in the first place. > > As others have said, it just makes it likely that the track will be > added as a new track at a later date, assuming it does exist on the ground. > > Some basic signage at the trackhead, and formal closure (announcement on > the NPWS alerts page) would be enough to set the various tags so that it > shouldn't appear on downstream maps. > I agree with all of this. If the track exists on the ground, something should exist in OSM. This situation is not a novel one that requires a new tag prefix, I think it should be represented with: - highway=* because it is clearly a track to a surveyor - informal=yes because it is not maintained like the other paths - access=no because the relevant authority says so It sounds like the access=no tag is less clearly justified, but any signage at the site is justification enough, even if it is poorly maintained or vandalised: the access tag is describing policy, not practical use. I would encourage the managers to ensure signage is maintained, because many people won't be using OSM as their source of truth! I think the OSM edits and email discussions also serve as justification for the access=no tag. A publicly posted notice would be ideal, so that it can be referenced as a source. If there are downstream maps that are not representing the access restriction, then we should put pressure on them to make use of the access tag. It is a very established tag, and it is the correct solution for many sensitive situations like this, including private property, etc. Finally, it would be somewhat helpful to mention in the description=* tag that use of the track is discouraged/banned for rehabilitation. Justification for reinstating the OSM features could also be documented in the notes=* tag to minimise the risk of this discussion coming up again. Cheers, Ben >
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