After doing a walk on a track in the Mornington Peninsula in recent weeks, I checked OSM later and noted that only part of the track was shown.
I had recorded all of this track with a GPS in the past so tried editing the GPX file in MapInfo to export just what was needed to fill in the gaps.
However, the amended GPX file failed to import successfully into OSM, so I ended up importing the whole (original) file in as a private GPS track, and instead traced off what was needed to fill in the gaps.
When I have time (!), I’m looking to go through OSM for places visited on road-trip holidays to Tasmania (earlier this year) and NSW (last year). These holidays were recorded with MemoryMap app, so there will be just 1 or 2 GPX files for a whole day of travels.
Is the above method of tracing off a private imported GPS track OK to include any walking tracks not yet included on OSM?
When you upload a GPX trace to OSM as “private” it is available to other mappers. What they see are points without timestamps. In JOSM “private” traces look like this:
I have found that GpsPrune - OpenStreetMap Wiki is good for cutting out parts of a GPX file to upload to OSM.
Thank you for the feedback, Andrew. I’ll take a look at Gps Prune.
Another query for walking tracks after looking at some of those in my area on OSM I’ve walked in the past.
Where a line is part path and part boardwalk, but has been added in the past by someone else as path only for the whole line (or tagged surface=boardwalk only), is there any point in splitting the line to tag the boardwalk section as bridge=boardwalk, and if so, is there any easy way to do this, please?
Some examples I could do from aerial photography but others would require visiting in person to pick up the change point.
bridge=boardwalk is the correct tag, it covers all kinds of low elevated walkways independently of the actual surface some might be actual timber boards (surface=wood), or more commonly FRP (surface=fibre_reinforced_polymer_grate), so best to change this if you come across it.
Absolutely, it can be used,
- to improve routing duration estimates as the walking speed will differ on a boardwalk vs the ground
- to provide guidance to people planning on walking there on what they can expect on the walk
- for people researching and studying the environment and how it may be impacted by walkers
just add a node at the start and end, then split the way to create a new way segment, then update the tags, the actual process will vary depending on the editor you’re using but most editors allow you to do this.
Yep, depending on how you’re doing your survey on the ground and what tools you’re using you might want to add a note at the start/end points to help mapping it later at the desk.
if you’re comfortable uploading the whole route, that would be best, even if is already mapped, having extra GPS traces helps to improve the accuracy by averaging multiple GPS traces, and while Strava has to some extent leaped pass OSM in this ability via their heatmaps, it’s still nice to build up OSM’s open GPS traces.
Thanks for the advice on GPS Prune, Andrew; I’ve downloaded it and having compared OSM vs. my GPS track for the Woolmers estate near Longford (Tas), this is one exmaple where it could be used to update OSM when time permits.
Andrew, thanks for that - I’ve tried it out in ID for where I can make the amendment from aerial photography and it’s worked OK.
This raises a question I had wondered about, that if an uploaded GPS track is only used to (say) assist in realigning a badly traced road, is it best to delete it after the edit? In my case I often end up with 4 parallel tracks in the file, so could get a little confusing if viewed again.
Oh BTW I use Viking for splitting GPS tracks. Has some nice features.
Still useful for future improvements based on averaging the GPS traces.