I will "go here," too. Years and years before this talk (I participated in the OSM-US sponsored Mappy Hour where this talk of "fragile trails" in the USA's southwestern deserts where "even a human footstep crunches to death slowly crystallizing soil" was presented) my local area had similar issues where mountain bikers in a "trails closed to mountain bikers" area went and mountain biked the trails anyway. It was cat-and-mouse for years with state police catching a lot of mice and many expensive techy mountain bikes (thousands of $ each!) confiscated / impounded.
All the while, OSM exploded with mountain bike trails in the area. These got technical, with mountain bike ratings on the (very closed) trails, while EXPRESSLY tagged access=no. This caused a "dimming to gray" (or grey if you prefer), though you could still see the trails in Carto, visually they are "closed trails" (if you know that as you look at them or see "gray path" on a legend). One night, they vanished (from Carto, from OSM). Days later, they re-appeared with what looked to me like even "tighter" tagging emphasizing they are closed trails. And even new ones appeared (not many more), with the same "strict" (closed, no access to hikers or bikers) tagging. They remain, they are closed, I don't think illegal mountain biking in the area is as much a problem as it used to be, as enforcement got better. Connecting those dots is not hard for anybody in this community. I don't want to sound "hard" as I say this, but as you manage property, enforce rights against trespassing if you don't want trespassing there. The "moral of the story" that seemed to shake out from this was "maps don't cause illegal mountain biking, people do." (Impolitely, "stupid people" and "scofflaws" can be substituted). I hear loud and clear that "well, a map displays a trail..." then there is a stupidly spectacular fail on the part of humans after that. Caveat mapor. The problem is not an accurate map with accurate data. The problem is human activity (including being stupid or a scofflaw) and / or enforcement against it. We humans are not perfect about discovering and trespassing everybody who shouldn't use a trail. But OSM (or any map) is not the cause of that. Does OSM have a place in the discussion? Yes. We are having it now (in part). We publish "truth on the ground." After that, caveat mapor. There remains work to do in educating, especially the public on public lands, about how fragile some (public) places are and how stupid it would be to partake of a (particular) trail. Especially if signs discourage or forbid using it. A trail in a map is not an invitation to hike it: these are merely data. As Andrew wonderfully notes, there are "shorter, better paths" to easing this situation. Good for us for having this dialog and better developing these. I'm not cross-posting to talk-us, as people have heard / read me say this before (there and other places). _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
