On 5 December 2011 17:44, David Earl <[email protected]> wrote: > You may remember the announcement of the University of Cambridge's > OpenStreetMap project back in July > I was appointed to the project from that and I have now written up a bit > about what I'm doing on my OSM diary ( > http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/davidearl/diary/15398 ), and also > published the tagging schema I'm working to ( > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge ) > (which is, of course, a living document which we'll be updating as things > progress), and which I hope may help others inclined to map parts of the > University.
One thing that jumped out to me in the diary entry linked above was the suggestion that all paths/tracks on University land should be marked access=private. The rationale given is that a "Permissive Footpath" in UK legal parlance has a specific meaning that doesn't apply to the paths there. That may be the case, but I don't think that OSM's access=permissive necessarily corresponds to that strict meaning. I've always used access=permissive to indicate that the there's no guaranteed right of way, but that owner is generally happy for people to use the route without needing to seek special permission on an individual basis -- which is my interpolation of what http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Access says for access=permissive and access=private. That being the case, I'm not convinced that all the paths through colleges are best tagged by access=private. I don't know if things have changed now, but my former college (Pembroke) used to allow free/open access to visitors (during the day, if not in large groups, and not during exam term). I don't think that this corresponds to the OSM wiki definition of access=private with which the paths are currently tagged. While access=permissive may not be prefect, I think it's the closest OSM access tag for the situation on the ground there. Tagging all the ways within the college as access=private also removes the distinction of which ways are actually marked as private to visitors. (In Pembroke there were a only a few such paths: one going to the Master's Lodge, one in the Fellows' Garden, and one along the back of the Hall / Senior Parlour, and probably some of the access gates which are generally kept locked.) While the university may not like the term "permissive" I think it would be the closest access=* value as far as OSM is concerned, at least for the colleges that do allow open access to visitors. Then of course there are the tourist routes in the colleges where you have to pay to look round. Apart from having to pay for admission, these routes would also be similar to the routes in colleges that don't charge. Overall, I think they're closer to access=permissive than access=private, as there's a standard admission policy of "pay X to get in", rather than people having to negotiate individual terms for access. Is there a specific access tag for this sort of situation already? What do we do for (say) paths in national trust gardens or theme parks where there's an admission charge? (Maybe access=customer, though the wiki says that it's use is disputed.) (Finally, as an aside: for official UK "Permissive Footpaths", I think using designation=permissive_footpath in addition to *=permissive would be better tagging. It's got a reasonable amount of usage: http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/designation#values and using this tag would make it clear which ways were officially designated as a "permissive footpath" and which just had generally permissive access of the sort that I'm suggesting above.) What do other people think? -- Robert Whittaker _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
