I think Frederik highlights the limitations of armchair mapping quite well here. There are millions of miles of these minor highways, many remote and poorly used and reliant on landowners respecting (or councils enforcing) the law. It's not uncommon to encounter paths which are blocked, which deviate from the official line or indeed where the landowner has provided an alternate route in the hope fewer people will walk through their garden! These are all valuable bits of information which can be found from a proper survey and can be mapped accordingly.
Does it matter that a walker passing along a public right of way not recently surveyed but shown in osm might encounter one of these issues? Yes, in that we aim to map these things, but 'no' in that these discrepancies have existed in all the maps walkers have always used, it's a familiar problem. Even without a map, when we walkers see a signpost or waymarked public footpath we know we absolutely should be able to walk along the route indicated, but we know that there's a distinctly non-zero chance of encountering some kind of issue. Adam On Tue, 16 Dec 2025 at 11:34, John Aldridge via Talk-GB < [email protected]> wrote: > On 16/12/2025 09:55, Mark Goodge wrote: > > On 15/12/2025 20:37, Adam Snape wrote: > >> That said, I think it is possible to be too puritanical in this > >> regard. The paths need to be usable. Would we map a highway through a > >> wall, a building, or a barbed wire fence where a Right of Way was > >> obstructed? We shouldn't just abide by the wishes of every landowner > >> who wishes they didn't have a path through their land, but in cases > >> where alternative routes are in place for safety or errosion purposes, > >> certainly from an organistation like the NT, I'd echo Michael's > >> suggestion of mapping the route with foot=discouraged. > > > > I'd be inclined to agree with that. > I'm sure I saw a suggestion, on a previous occasion when something like > this cropped up in this list, that where a RoW was impassible the > > designation=public_footpath > foot=designated > prow_ref=* > > tags should be attached to a way which is *not* tagged highway=*. This > made sense to me at the time as reflecting accurately both the legal and > de-facto state. > > John > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-GB mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb >
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