Is it possible to temporarily hide public view of a trail?

Hello Everyone,

I have been building a trail for the last 5+ years. Last year some people started to find and use it. That is fine, but it is not finished. I was really hoping I could delay the display of this trail on public maps for this last summer as I finish the trail. Is there a way to temporarily prevent this from being displayed on apps like trailforks and Gaia? I do not want to mess with anyone elses edits or hard work, but I would appreciate some respect for all the hard work I put in on this and allowing me to finish it properly.

If it’s still under construction, you can tag it as highway=construction, construction=path. Most maps will still show it, but in a distinct “under construction” style, and routing engines will not give routes along it.

Alternatively, you can use the construction: lifecycle prefix. This will completely hide it from nearly all maps, but is a non-standard tagging and many quality-assurance tools won’t handle it the way they would the highway=construction tag.

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Thank you for the suggestion. Any idea how long it takes changes to show up on Gaia / Trailforks? I am sure they do not update very often.

In order to deemphasize it in the trail apps, you should also include:

  • informal=yes if it’s not endorsed by the land owner
  • access=no if it’s illegal to use, or access=private if it requires permission
  • an appropriate sac_scale or mtb:scale if it is difficult to traverse
  • trail_visibility if it’s hard to see where to go next

Why can’t I delete this trail? # What should I do instead?

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If you could please give us a link to where the trail shows in OSM, we may be able to help further.

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https://www.gaiagps.com/map/?loc=15.0/-122.9490/50.1678

https://www.trailforks.com/tracker/map/?activitytype=0&z=15.0&lat=50.16888&lon=-122.94716