Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
Phil! and Kevin, I like everything said! "Huge are tough to edit," yes. "Tie them all together with a super-relation to show that they are together with certain tags," yes, or maybe. I'm kicking it around, we are. The C Trail does make for an interesting case. We might agree that cycle_network=US:NPS is a good start. But exactly which object in OSM to tag this? Sometimes we make what seems like a duplicate of existing data, sometimes we shine a bright light forward by keeping things separate at the cost of a bit of apparent redundancy but really more like specificity. Sometimes we tie a bow AND a ribbon on things. OK. Richard (username) edited relation 1392951 a day or so ago and I'd say tightened up at the Maryland level. If somebody tied this COC and others together into a "C" super-relation tagged with cycle_network=US:NPS (and "the correct" member elements as state-level routes) I could see balls continuing to bounce as they have been, especially as mild naming conventions "stitch a whole" together, Lonvia's routes panel is quite informative in this regard, though the alphabetic vs. numeric sorting of the USBRs went out the window long ago. If not, OK. If COC and others get a cycle_network=US:NPS tag, and we pause, no super-relation, OK, that makes sense, too. I think we have to "keep being sensible." Maybe have a check point amongst ourselves every once in a while. Consensus can be slow. With less wordiness, I know. It's a big country, a big map, a big planet. Let's do our best, especially when talking with each other about how we agree things are built. It's been chaotic, it has always a little chaotic, nothing wrong with a little order understood amongst us. SteveA ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
On Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 9:36 AM Phil! Gold wrote: > The "state at a time" pattern, as I have always understood it, exists to > keep vastly distant objects from being linked with each other. It makes > it much less likely for someone, say, updating I-95 in Florida to get an > editing conflict with someone else who made a change in Massachusetts. > State borders provide convenient locations for the division of overly-lond > relations. It's mostly, as I understand it, "huge routes cause editing conflicts, make validation difficult, and otherwise make trouble for the tools," combined with, "if you're going to break up a route, break it in places that make some sort of sense." When I created the (still incomplete, sorry!) relation for the Long Path hiking trail, I found that the tools were struggling with the number of way segments. (I switched to Meerkartor briefly at one point because JOSM would crash on me!) I made the totally arbitrary decision that the best points to break it up were the county lines. I then made the even more arbitrary decision that I'd lump in the George Washington Bridge and 179th Street in with Bergen County, because it just didn't feel right to create a New York County trail section for that short a distance over city streets. If it turns out that the sections will indeed have distinct attributes (this includes Richard Fairhurst's observation that different states treat their bicycle routes with different levels of respect), it'll be easy to break them apart. Merging route relations is harder, because when two relations merge into one, one of them is deleted, damaging the ability of some of the history tools to track changes. I'm therefore inclined to say, "if it's already split in the database, leave it split; create a group if necessary". The tools deal with routes-inside-routes pretty well. https://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/#route?id=919642 manages to assemble the sections into a coherent whole. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
* stevea [2019-07-11 17:38 -0700]: > I know it seems "like it just makes sense" to combine Maryland and DC > relations, but there are rather deliberate reasons to keep these > separate. One is state-level, the other is federal-level (is one), but > the "state at a time for route relations" is a fairly well-established > method of tossing things into buckets. We do it with bike routes, > motorways and more. However: The C Trail is contained within the C National Historic Park, which is owned by the National Park Service, so it's all really at the same (federal) level. The "state at a time" pattern, as I have always understood it, exists to keep vastly distant objects from being linked with each other. It makes it much less likely for someone, say, updating I-95 in Florida to get an editing conflict with someone else who made a change in Massachusetts. State borders provide convenient locations for the division of overly-lond relations. It's also a rule of thumb; I've seen plenty of cases where short distances in multiple states are aggregated into a single relation. (e.g. there's only one relation for US 340, although it spans MD, VA (in two sections), and WV.) Since there's only a short section of the C Canal Trail in DC, I don't really see the harm in putting all of its ways into a single relation. -- ...computer contrarian of the first order... / http://aperiodic.net/phil/ PGP: 026A27F2 print: D200 5BDB FC4B B24A 9248 9F7A 4322 2D22 026A 27F2 --- -- Anyone who has never hacked sendmail.cf has no soul. Anyone who has hacked it twice has no brain. -- Peter da Silva --- -- ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
Minh Nguyen wrote: > As with the network tag on bus routes, what's important for both > network and cycle_network is that the route is intended to form > part of a coherent *network* (almost like a brand, but not quite). It's also useful for those of us writing routers, as it means we can avoid applying a route relation uplift in those states that send bike routes along entirely unsuitable state roads. (New York is a particular offender but there are others.) On my relationising travels, I spotted a couple of places where people had mapped a city cycle network as a single route relation, often with "System" in the title: Flagstaff Urban Trail System was one such. This is clearly wrong. As a quick fix I changed the relation tagging from type=route to type=network - which, interestingly, Waymarked Trails still renders: https://cycling.waymarkedtrails.org/#route?id=2815833 - and created relations for some of the longer routes. But really it needs all the routes to be broken out into individual relations and given a common cycle_network tag. cheers Richard -- Sent from: http://gis.19327.n8.nabble.com/USA-f5284732.html ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
Yes, thank you, Minh. I forgot to mention the importance of using the cycle_network tag, as it can both disambiguate routes which might be named/numbered the same or similarly AND coalesce them together into a coherent collection of routes which are clearly "all members of a single network." As our https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Key:cycle_network wiki says, "Ideally, all route relations in a single cycleway network should be tagged with the same cycle_network=* value." That is (rather simply) what it does. I'd say it is typical for "government" (national-level, as in USBRS / ncn, state / rcn as well as city-county / lcn) routes to be collected together into a single cycle_network, all having the same value, like US:CA:SF for all of San Francisco's bicycle routes. Whether RAIL-TRAIL routes are collected together into cycle_networks isn't something I know a whole lot about right now, but I am curious for more real-world data to emerge about that. Here? Sure. In the map? (as in actual OSM cycle_network tagging)? Yes, that works, too. Try clicking that link above, then its "taginfo" link to get a flavor for how this tag is used. SteveA ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
On 2019-07-11 17:27, Greg Troxel wrote: Thanks for the nice summary. I have one minor issue to raise a question about: stevea writes: As for rail trails, very nice work, Richard! Rail trails are usually classified as local (lcn) if they are for cyclists, although some are sponsored at a state-level: these are properly tagged rcn (regional generally means "state-level" in the USA). I don't know this for sure (Minh?) but I might imagine that the C Canal Trail over and above the USBR 50 relation might be properly tagged rcn instead of lcn. Such decisions are best determined with more-local consensus by Contributors who are familiar with the local / state statutes which define the route. The Bicycle_Networks wiki describe (MUTCD-standard) signage for NUMBERED routes which disambiguate the network-level tag that should be used. For routes which happen to be signed on-the-ground as non-governmental (non-MUTCD-standard signage), please consider these on a case-by-case basis, starting (as Richard did) at the local (lcn) level. If network=rcn is actually a better value, this is likely to emerge with strong consensus at a more-local (state) level within OSM. The notion of state sponsorship is interesting, and there is the aspect of a state bicycle route number, akin to a state numbered highway. I can certainly see that being rcn. Then there is the aspect that in MA, most things called "rail trails" end up getting built with state funds, and built to state construction standards, both avoiding the towns having to say and making the resulting trail much more costly (but nicer in some ways). These trails tend to have names, like "Nashua River Rail Trail", "Assabet River Rail Trail", "Bruce Freeman Rail Trail", but they don't have a "MA Bicycle 29" designation, or if so nobody knows that. Most of them go over fairly short distances; the Nashua River one is about 12 miles and is in the towns of Ayer, Groton, Pepperell, MA and a bit in Nashua, NH. To me, that feels local in scope rather than statewide, so I'd want to see it as lcn. The fact that it was funded with state rather than local money doesn't seem important. (Actually, state money pays for local roads in complicated scheme.) Now, if the Central Mass Rail Trail were somehow complete in a Cambridge to Northhampton sort of way, or even half of that, it's obviously rcn, regardless of who organizes it. This gets fuzzy. Perhaps, in a US-centric northest-centric way, it feels like rcn is 100 km. I'm not sure this ended up being useful. I think I more or less agree with where I think you ended up, saying that other than federal and state numbered routes, all routes are lcn, unless there is really clear local consensus that they are very important and of state-level scope, in which case they can be promoted to rcn. I think this speaks to the utility of the cycle_network [1] and operator tags. The network=lcn/rcn/ncn/icn tagging scheme may've sufficed in the early days in the UK, but increasingly more nuance is needed on both sides of the pond. As with the network tag on bus routes, what's important for both network and cycle_network is that the route is intended to form part of a coherent *network* (almost like a brand, but not quite). A given route's actual length, connectivity, build quality, or ownership on its own is perhaps less important, but consistent signage or ownership is how an organization might establish a set of routes as a network. Long ago, Ohio's transportation department set up a state system of lettered bicycle routes along rural roads, which no practically no one knows about. But local bike advocacy groups also coordinated on a system of numbered routes over state- and county-maintained trails. Over time, Dayton-area counties took up the task of signposting the unofficial numeric routes with the same kind of signage as the official statewide system. Then adjacent counties up and down the state followed suit, to the point that the numbered routes are the state system for all intents and purposes. A few years ago, all the routes in the state were renumbered, something that has happened many times to state road route networks. [2] But IIRC it was carried out by trail managers and coordinated by regional planning commissions rather than the state. The numeric network includes some spur routes that are shorter than many city-maintained local routes but bear state route signage, such as route 3E. [3] The alphabetic and numeric routes alike are tagged with the same cycle_network=US:OH, though the operator tag can be used to distinguish if necessary. It's all a bit chaotic, but hey, that's reality. [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:cycle_network [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Highway_renumbering_in_the_United_States [3] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/128492582 -- m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us ___ Talk-us mailing list
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
Phil! I know it seems "like it just makes sense" to combine Maryland and DC relations, but there are rather deliberate reasons to keep these separate. One is state-level, the other is federal-level (is one), but the "state at a time for route relations" is a fairly well-established method of tossing things into buckets. We do it with bike routes, motorways and more. I think what Richard might have been describing is what Greg Troxel is trying to get at now: where we say "state sponsorship" of a rail trail begins and ends. Greg: Especially when MUTCD M1-8 signage is used on the route, network=rcn for state routes seems clear (we agree, you and I, and the wiki for at least five or six years). The [Nashua River Trail, Assabet River Rail Trail, Bruce Freeman Rail Trail...] examples you offer do "feel more local" to me as well. I am thousands of miles away on the other coast, so I only offer what I see in a wider and longer-term national scope about how this sort of tagging has evolved in the last decade or so. I'd dislike offering a "carte blanche" (too easy) sort of heuristic like "under 100 km" when what we're trying to capture here in distinguishing at the local/lcn and regional-state/rcn "levels" is (at least) two fold: 1) A "level of government" which rather handily maps "rcn=state(provincial)" and "lcn=county/city" in USA and even North America 2) A kind of way of thinking about the "greater continent-wide notion of how we think about bicycle routes" (here in North America). Sometimes, it can and does make sense for a rail trail to be an rcn even as it has started out as an lcn. I believe that "more local" (people in the state or region) have more to say about this than any single person does, though I do think it is helpful to keep in mind the evolution of these tags in North America over the last 15 years. It hasn't been orderly, but it is feeling more orderly. I think if we are careful in how we come to agreement about what it means to "promote to rcn" (and we clearly express those rules/methods of determination) in our wiki, with consensus, we'll continue to be doing the best job of this that we can. Sometimes things ARE fuzzy. Sometimes, with a little discussion, we can knock a bit of fuzz right off. SteveA California ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
Thanks for the nice summary. I have one minor issue to raise a question about: stevea writes: > As for rail trails, very nice work, Richard! Rail trails are usually > classified as local (lcn) if they are for cyclists, although some are > sponsored at a state-level: these are properly tagged rcn (regional > generally means "state-level" in the USA). I don't know this for sure > (Minh?) but I might imagine that the C Canal Trail over and above > the USBR 50 relation might be properly tagged rcn instead of lcn. > Such decisions are best determined with more-local consensus by > Contributors who are familiar with the local / state statutes which > define the route. The Bicycle_Networks wiki describe (MUTCD-standard) > signage for NUMBERED routes which disambiguate the network-level tag > that should be used. For routes which happen to be signed > on-the-ground as non-governmental (non-MUTCD-standard signage), please > consider these on a case-by-case basis, starting (as Richard did) at > the local (lcn) level. If network=rcn is actually a better value, > this is likely to emerge with strong consensus at a more-local (state) > level within OSM. The notion of state sponsorship is interesting, and there is the aspect of a state bicycle route number, akin to a state numbered highway. I can certainly see that being rcn. Then there is the aspect that in MA, most things called "rail trails" end up getting built with state funds, and built to state construction standards, both avoiding the towns having to say and making the resulting trail much more costly (but nicer in some ways). These trails tend to have names, like "Nashua River Rail Trail", "Assabet River Rail Trail", "Bruce Freeman Rail Trail", but they don't have a "MA Bicycle 29" designation, or if so nobody knows that. Most of them go over fairly short distances; the Nashua River one is about 12 miles and is in the towns of Ayer, Groton, Pepperell, MA and a bit in Nashua, NH. To me, that feels local in scope rather than statewide, so I'd want to see it as lcn. The fact that it was funded with state rather than local money doesn't seem important. (Actually, state money pays for local roads in complicated scheme.) Now, if the Central Mass Rail Trail were somehow complete in a Cambridge to Northhampton sort of way, or even half of that, it's obviously rcn, regardless of who organizes it. This gets fuzzy. Perhaps, in a US-centric northest-centric way, it feels like rcn is 100 km. I'm not sure this ended up being useful. I think I more or less agree with where I think you ended up, saying that other than federal and state numbered routes, all routes are lcn, unless there is really clear local consensus that they are very important and of state-level scope, in which case they can be promoted to rcn. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
> Kevin Kenny wrote: >> 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). Richard Fairhurst wrote: > Ok. I've just finished a pass through CONUS relationising pretty much all > the significant leisure trails I could find for which there weren't already > route relations. HDYC is telling me that "recently" I've added 334 bike > routes - I'm not sure what period that covers but it sounds about right. > > By and large I've tagged them with network=lcn - there's certainly a case > for upgrading some to =rcn but I'll leave that to those with local > knowledge. > > There's a bit of work still to do on smaller local trails that also form > part of a longer route - e.g. parts of the Bay Trail, or the East Coast > Greenway. It would be good to have a distinct C Canal Trail relation over > and above the USBRS 50 relation, for example. Having entered one (temporal) version of the ECG (full disclosure, Softworkers.com did so professionally), I agree with Richard that there are additional "smaller local trails that form part of a longer route." Often these are spurs OFF OF the "main" route, although in other instances they superimpose at a different level (e.g. an lcn which shares infrastructure with an ncn). Obviously it is important to "get the level right" when entering these, including entering two route relations if that is a reality in the world (an ncn AND an lcn). The USA has firm methodologies by which we use these three (barely four, if you count international) levels. The details are in our wikis: https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States/Bicycle_Networks (which links to https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/WikiProject_U.S._Bicycle_Route_System , our national / ncn network). Please note that at a national level, ONLY numbered USBRs should be entered, and the process to do so is quite well-established. Exceptionally (because of seriously large scope or importance) there are now also four "quasi-national" routes (up from two originally), which have emerged over the long term with wide (and sometimes fragile) consensus. At state (rcn) and local (lcn) levels (the latter can include city-level and county-level), OSM consensus differs slightly state by state as to what "qualifies" to enter, but the bar is fairly high for all. Briefly, if it is a government-sponsored route network, enter it, especially if signed. For what appear to be "bike club" networks, think twice (or thrice) before entering these: it is not usually the case that these are bona fide route networks, rather they are what a private group considers "good rides" and there are bazillions of these with which we do NOT wish to clutter the map. Well-established rail trails which allow or are specifically designated for cyclists DO get a route relation (and please start, as Richard did, with network=lcn). Also, there are proprietary routes (like ACA's routes, which are firmly discouraged from being entered as they are copyrighted), these should not be entered. However, there is a tenet in OSM that "if you ride the route and acquire the track as a GPX, you have established legal nexus as a Contributor to enter these data into OSM." If you do this, be careful that any name=* tag you enter is something you have permission to use, too. This can be tricky if you think about it (why ride a ride and then be prevented from entering it AND its name because you don't have permission to use its name?). However, simply "riding a ride" and then entering it as a route relation is highly discouraged: bicycle route relations really are meant to express government-sponsored routes, rail trails and rarely, "quasi-private" routes (neither government-sanctioned nor approved by AASHTO, but public data, usually signed with proprietary signage). There are state- (and even county-) level wikis which describe these "more regional" (or local) networks, California has at least four counties that I know of. If you enter these routes / networks, you are highly encouraged to find the right place in our wiki-universe to enter at least a blurb that they exist. Each and every state in the USA has a wiki and more and more of them are emerging to include a Bicycle Routes section. Please, build up these wiki with such routes / networks! As for rail trails, very nice work, Richard! Rail trails are usually classified as local (lcn) if they are for cyclists, although some are sponsored at a state-level: these are properly tagged rcn (regional generally means "state-level" in the USA). I don't know this for sure (Minh?) but I might imagine that the C Canal Trail over and above the USBR 50 relation might be properly tagged rcn
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
* Richard Fairhurst [2019-07-11 01:56 -0700]: > It would be good to have a distinct C Canal Trail relation over and > above the USBRS 50 relation, for example. You mean aside from these? https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1392951 https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/9773990 I suppose it is a little silly to have a separate DC portion; I could just go combine them into a single relation. -- ...computer contrarian of the first order... / http://aperiodic.net/phil/ PGP: 026A27F2 print: D200 5BDB FC4B B24A 9248 9F7A 4322 2D22 026A 27F2 --- -- The Old Man and the Sea LITE(tm) by Ernest Hemingway An old man goes fishing, but doesn't have much luck. --- -- ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Mapping rail trails
Kevin Kenny wrote: > 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). Ok. I've just finished a pass through CONUS relationising pretty much all the significant leisure trails I could find for which there weren't already route relations. HDYC is telling me that "recently" I've added 334 bike routes - I'm not sure what period that covers but it sounds about right. By and large I've tagged them with network=lcn - there's certainly a case for upgrading some to =rcn but I'll leave that to those with local knowledge. There's a bit of work still to do on smaller local trails that also form part of a longer route - e.g. parts of the Bay Trail, or the East Coast Greenway. It would be good to have a distinct C Canal Trail relation over and above the USBRS 50 relation, for example. cheers Richard -- Sent from: http://gis.19327.n8.nabble.com/USA-f5284732.html ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
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
