I’ve recently come across a mapper that was focused on improving horse access-related tagging on park trails in the Mid-Atlantic region. I’d reached out via changeset comments and a zero-hour block (a warning, standard DWG practices) to attempt to thwart some of the methodology but instead of offering to improve, the user sent a nasty message and deleted their account.
So, now I’m left with the task of cleanup and some of these require local knowledge. That is where you can help. Here is how the mapper was operating:
- Identify a park that had permissive horse access policies based on the website.
- Add the
horse=designatedtag to all trails (path, track, etc.) - Add all of the
horse=designatedtrails to a horse route relation (route=horse,network=lhn)
Problem Statement
The problem with this style of editing is two-fold:
- Noting all trails as
horse=designatedimplies they are specifically designated as horse/equestrian trails. In local cases I am familiar with, there is not one single sign or on-ground indication on the trails that notes them as a horse trail, let allow allows or prohibits access. - Adding all horse trails to one single relation is not the intent of the route relation. Routes are not categories. This relation work was done do that the house routes would show up on WayMarkedTrails, on the user’s now deleted profile, a deliberate ‘mapping for the renderer’ ploy.
How to fix
Find one of these horse=designated trails or routes around Maryland and Pennsylvania. Waymarked Trails is a good way to find these. Here’s an example: Waymarked Trails - Riding
- Assuming the web-based research as to the permissibility of horse access by the mapper was valid (and I haven’t found any reason to doubt them,) change the trails from
horse=designatedtohorse=yes. This is to say horses are allowed by right, but not that the path is a designated bridle (horse) trail. The effect of addinghorse=designatedis that Carto renders the trails using the green-dash line symbology similar tohighway=bridleway. I’d encourage true bridleway trails to be mapped as such. - Remove the route relations that are only a collection of horse friendly paths, not end-to-end trails.
Thanks!