To believe a path should be removed from OSM purely because it's
"blocked" or can't be seen (both VERY poor, subjective reasons), which
is what Frederik is suggesting is very poor mapping. As I said above
there are many tags used to describe the condition of a path & it's
physical characteristics.
DaveF
On 16/12/2025 18:25, Adam Snape wrote:
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
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