Is there a tag for officially recognised hiking or cycling trails?

Julian_Greiler · 2024-09-19T08:55:24.798Z

Hi OSM community!

As I am working on visitor management within protected areas, I came upon the problem, that numerous outdoor apps use the OSM as background and also the way network for routing proposals. As I am analysing the data, it becomes clear, that a lot of proposed tracks (from the app or user generated) are not on the official recognised trails by the administrative. Please understand, that I also like to find my own trails and come by nice places. But in consideration of preserving the protected area, it is problematic, that large wildlife areas, which should be not trespassed became widely accessable by promoted tracks.

So I thought of a possibility for those apps to limit their promoted tracks on officially allowed ways. As they use OSM as source, maybe a tag, that can be filterd would be helpful to protect those areas.

It is clear to me, that there is no way to hinder visitors from going offroad, but it would be less convenient to do so, as it is not suggested.

I don’t know, if such a tag already exists, if so, I am welcoming you to tell me about it.

looking forward to a fruitful discussion

greetings
Ju

Kovoschiz · 2024-09-19T09:35:09.242Z

The standard is access=yes , or foot= / bicycle= =designated , to confer by legal accessibility. For official status specifically, there’s only double negative informal=no that’s not common yet. It’s not exactly devised to be in end-use originally. Organised Editing/Activities/Trails Stewardship Initiative - OpenStreetMap Wiki

mcliquid · 2024-09-19T09:46:40.980Z

Hi Julian,

there are various tags in OpenStreetMap that can cover the multifaceted requirements of your query in different ways. Basically, the handling of and in nature reserves varies greatly from region to region. As I assume that the area you are interested in is in a German-speaking region, I will link to the German-language wiki pages.

A very valuable page for tags regarding access prohibition or access restrictions is the section about Sonderflächen.

In addition, there are also special ways of presenting guidelines in winter in Betretungsverbote für Gebiete im Winter.

The presentation of official and locally signposted hiking and cycling routes is done with relations. I recommend the page on Routes as an introduction to this topic.

In summary, these are the tools we can offer as an OSM community:

Present official routes in the data
Map nature reserves and their rules
Map access restrictions through signage
Represent what applies on the ground

What we cannot do:

Manipulate “desired” or preferred routes
Prevent AI-generated routes from being used in outdoor apps
Prevent “normal” paths from being used instead of official routes
Prevent forbidden paths from being used in routing
Generally ensure that the router adheres to the OSM data

Another recommended website is Digitize the Planet, a foundation of Outdoor Active.

I can’t tell which outdoor apps you’re talking about specifically, but apps like Komoot and Strava create a lot of tour suggestions purely on the basis of “AI” - without any reference to the OSM data at all. Even the so-called “highlights” in Komoot are created solely by their users and have no connection to OSM.

Does that help?

Julian_Greiler · 2024-09-19T10:01:23.930Z

Hi!

Thank you both for your answers. I know, that we have no means or right to prevent any company or natural person to use the data freely. I only thougth of a easy possibility to offer such products a way to become more “environment friendly”. As I work with different apps (which I cannot tell you for legal reasons ) I know that there is a lot of user and AI created content. What I was looking for is more of a way to filter ways that pass trough sensible areas.

Additionally, it has to be easy added and modified by the authority of those protected areas, so that they can keep the data up to date.

@Kovoschiz thank you for providing me with the guideline from Trails Stewardship Initiative. that sounds pretty convenient, at least for me.

@mcliquid thank you for clarification. You were right, that some of the areas I am working on ar within Austria and Germany, but alltogether the areas are spread over whole europe.

I will keep you updated, if I find a solution in cooperation with those protection areas. (At least, they need to be willing to do so… even if there is no guarantee, that any provider for trailing will implement any of that)

_MisterY · 2024-09-19T10:27:58.104Z

As mcliquid suggested, you could create Relations and mark those routes as official (a relation connects multiple paths). You can see examples of hiking paths all over the world i.e. in OsmAnd pedestrian mode. They usually have colors and route signs along the way and are painted that way on the map.
You can also use the access= tag and mark them as legally non-accessible, if that’s the case.

This is a common problem, where authorities would prefer people to not use certain areas but it’s not exactly legally clear. That probably indicates that the problem should be escalated to whoever has the legal authority over an area, and introduce measures that prevent trespassing (i.e. a sign that says “keep at designated paths only”). Than this can be mapped. Not the other way around.

Julian_Greiler:

What I was looking for is more of a way to filter ways that pass trough sensible areas.

The problem is that different people have different views on what sensible is, unfortunately.

Julian_Greiler · 2024-09-19T10:52:23.143Z

_MisterY:

The problem is that different people have different views on what sensible is, unfortunately.

As that is right, I would suggest, that sensible is, what the administration of this area mark as sensible.

Julian_Greiler · 2024-09-19T11:01:46.743Z

So I would suggest the following:

Corresponding with the administration of various protected areas, I will notify them, that they should mark all official ways as what they are and provide visitors with the information about trespassing rules. This can then be mapped. Additionally, they should include following tags within relations on official ways:

access=yes
informal=no
foot=yes (for only hiking trails)
foot=designated and bicycle=designated (for hiking and cycling trails)
bicycle=yes (for cycling trails)

additionally they should tag ways that shouldn’t be used with informal=yes

The next step would be to discuss that with the companies providing app-based trail planning to see, if there are solutions or not.

mcliquid · 2024-09-19T11:09:38.693Z

Julian_Greiler:

Additionally, it has to be easy added and modified by the authority of those protected areas, so that they can keep the data up to date.

As I understand it, that’s exactly what Digitize the Planet does.

Julian_Greiler:

You were right, that some of the areas I am working on ar within Austria and Germany, but alltogether the areas are spread over whole europe.

Each country or even each federal state can and does have its own rules, which should be taken into account individually, but should be mapped in a standardized syntax. This is not easy and requires a lot of research and community involvement.

Julian_Greiler:

As that is right, I would suggest, that sensible is, what the administration of this area mark as sensible.

In Vorarlberg, I work very closely with the Vorarlberg state office and the Vorarlberg tourism office and together we have mapped the protected areas there and tried to map the rules there in OSM tags. Many things are possible, but often the attempt to achieve a “We don’t want that” with the “On the Ground” rule of OSM fails. Just because some official body says that something is not wanted (but also not forbidden), this can only be mapped in the OSM data to a limited extent.

Julian_Greiler:

Additionally, they should include following tags within relations on official ways:

access=yes
informal=no
foot=yes (for only hiking trails)
foot=designated and bicycle=designated (for hiking and cycling trails)
bicycle=yes (for cycling trails)

Please don’t. access=yes, foot=yes is implicit for all paths. Also, informal=no ~~is like a Troll tag, as it~~ is also considered the default.

As a basic assumption, we already assume that routes that are signposted locally are “official” anyway. There is therefore no need for a special tag to indicate that this is an official route. Only if something is not official can you use informal=yes.

Vinzenz_Mai · 2024-09-19T11:19:59.600Z

Julian_Greiler:

access=yes
informal=no
foot=yes (for only hiking trails)
foot=designated and bicycle=designated (for hiking and cycling trails)
bicycle=yes (for cycling trails)

That’s not a very good idea, because it allows motor_vehicles, even hgv .

informal=no is a default value.

For highway=path or highway=track

foot=yes
bicycle=yes

are both default values.

Instead the mapped pathes that shouldn’t be used (because the use is forbidden) should get

informal=yes
access=no (or private)

Route planning software like Komoot or brouter will respect this tagging and not routing over ways with these tags.

Edit: informal=no instead of informal=yes.
And yes, as @Kovoschiz said: tagging default values is not wrong - but it won’t help you to reach your goal.

Kovoschiz · 2024-09-19T12:19:32.036Z

The mistake of adding defaults isn’t classified as “trolling”. The meaning of the feature isn’t changed.
Not every case of adding the default is bad Good practice - OpenStreetMap Wiki
The problem is more on =path meaning if used, which rather doesn’t have much default to be sure of. But I don’t find =path unuseable.
Ensuring =footway / =cycleway and =path are used properly according to local standards is a slightly different issue. Although they may be intertwined.

mcliquid · 2024-09-19T12:47:25.892Z

Sorry for that.

SomeoneElse · 2024-09-19T13:14:47.284Z

Julian_Greiler:

@mcliquid thank you for clarification. You were right, that some of the areas I am working on ar within Austria and Germany, but alltogether the areas are spread over whole europe.

Vinzenz_Mai:

For highway=path or highway=track
foot=yes
bicycle=yes
are both default values.

Well it depends. In some places, where there is a general right of access on foot then those defaults make sense. Where I am (England) they don’t, and explicitly indicating what foot access there is (whether it’s a legal right, just at the discretion of the landowner and can be taken away at any time or not allowed) is very important.

Julian_Greiler:

numerous outdoor apps use the OSM as background and also the way network for routing proposals

That should be fine, provided that (a) they actually honour the rights-of-access tagging in OSM and (b) on a country by country basis access rights are tagged senibly in OSM.

That means that in England and Wales you really do need to look at access tags to see what foot access is allowed but in (say) Scotland, you don’t. Unfortunately a number of app developers aren’t good at understanding OSM tagging, partly because the highway=path mess means that using that tag means that it’s impossible to record access properly.

Julian_Greiler:

I don’t know, if such a tag already exists, if so, I am welcoming you to tell me about it.

You’re going to have to be more specific and provide examples so that people can look at current tagging, why apps might be misunderstanding that, and what might be a better way of tagging a particular feature.

I can link to an example where something that was historically used as a path was changed in OSM to not be one (at the suggestion of the land managers, with the agreement of most OSM people involved) in order to avoid potential injury or worse to someone “just following an OSM map”.

For completeness, I’m a member of OSM’s Data Working Group and we often get questions like “how do we stop people use app X from using path Y”. Often the answer is “you’ll need to talk to app X about it, since thy are not doing a good job of interpreting OSM data”.

PeterCooperJr · 2024-09-19T13:22:20.149Z

Vinzenz_Mai:

informal=no is a default value.

The guidance from the OSM US Trail Access Project, as I understand it, is to tag operator= for paths which are “official”, because “official” basically means “there’s some entity responsible for it”. It allows for informal=no instead if the mapper knows that it’s a “formal” trail but doesn’t know which entity is the operator.

I feel like explicitly tagging informal=no is better than having no informal or operator at all, so I think there’s value to it existing. But it’d be better to just map the operator (and operator:wikidata) if possible. (And then I’d agree that a path with an operator on it no longer needs an informal=no tag.)

I’m not sure if this theory is specific to the US (or at least what OSM US is trying to standardize), and maybe other countries think of mapping their trails differently?

SomeoneElse · 2024-09-19T13:56:55.428Z

PeterCooperJr:

I’m not sure if this theory is specific to the US (or at least what OSM US is trying to standardize), and maybe other countries think of mapping their trails differently?

The entire concept of “trails” is a bit US-centric. To take an example, some of the parts of this route run over what Americans might call “trails”. For example this part runs over an ancient right of access on foot and on horseback (and also now by bicycle), but that route also includes sections through the centre of a town.

In this case there is an “operator” - the National Trails website links to a community group. However, sometimes finding an “operator” is tricky; the origin might be someone who once wrote a book or what appears to be a guerrilla stickering effort.

Locally to me, any “trail operator” often has nothing to do with the upkeep of the land over which the trail runs, or even signage. They might just run a website somewhere.

Edit: That’s not to subtract in any way from the excellent job that the OSM US trails group has been doing in trying to get app developers to represent OSM data better!

PeterCooperJr · 2024-09-19T14:15:39.858Z

Hmm. It looks like you’re talking more about route relations, where I was talking more about individual highway=path segments. Probably both should have operator/informal tagging, as I could see it being the case that a route might be informal partially over a “official” path that has an operator, or a path might be informal but included in a route that an “operator” maintains.

The kinds of trails that I generally map are more just going around inside a park (well, leisure=nature_reserve in OSM-speak), and aren’t really part of a larger network of “routes”, so I hadn’t been thinking about those as much.

SomeoneElse · 2024-09-19T14:30:02.601Z

PeterCooperJr:

Probably both should have operator/informal tagging

Taking England and Wales as an example, the “operator” of an individual path segment will be “the organisation that owns the land”**. They have various legal resposibilities about keeping the path open. Someone else (the local authority) has a responsibility for the access signage, and someone else again probably put any route signage in place.

National Parks don’t imply just one owner. Some nature reserves and other parks will have “just one owner”, but some won’t.

** this might be a large national body such as the National Trust, or it might be a water company or just someone living nearby.

Vinzenz_Mai · 2024-09-19T21:18:29.681Z

SomeoneElse:

Julian_Greiler:

@mcliquid thank you for clarification. You were right, that some of the areas I am working on ar within Austria and Germany, but alltogether the areas are spread over whole europe.
Vinzenz_Mai:
For highway=path or highway=track
foot=yes
bicycle=yes
are both default values.
Well it depends. In some places, where there is a general right of access on foot then those defaults make sense. Where I am (England) they don’t, and explicitly indicating what foot access there is (whether it’s a legal right, just at the discretion of the landowner and can be taken away at any time or not allowed) is very important.

I overlooked the part that the areas are spread over whole Europe and can only second @mcliquid with his detailed informations.

And yes, I think now that informal=no can make sense in special protected areas like Way: ‪Riedbruch‬ (‪1065056474‬) | OpenStreetMap that is part of the protect_class=2 area Nationalpark Hunsrück-Hochwald . But I wouldn’t use it for the regular ways of the enclosing protected area.

I may add that it can be valid to change a way to abandoned:highway=* as I have done with Way: 39497266 | OpenStreetMap after a survey and a bit of research afterwards. This way was destroyed but the former course can still be tracked.

It’s a good idea to add a note to such a changed way (not only the changeset) because otherwise it can lead to a history like this one: Way History: 148232656 | OpenStreetMap

PeterCooperJr:

The kinds of trails that I generally map are more just going around inside a park (well, leisure=nature_reserve in OSM-speak), and aren’t really part of a larger network of “routes”, so I hadn’t been thinking about those as much.

For most protected areas in the region where I live (French-German border) this is not the case.