Mapping is Not Neutral: Why Adding Unsanctioned MTB Trails Endangers Access and Potentially Lives

General talk
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Mapping is Not Neutral: Why Adding Unsanctioned MTB Trails Endangers Access and Potentially Lives.

Please stop adding off-map/secret/unsanctioned mtb trails to OSM. The local trail building and riding communities do not want these trails on this map or any other map.
I know of OSM’s ‘ground truth’ policy but it’s irresponsible to take such an absolutist approach to mapping when the real world has nuance, grey areas, land managers, overuse issues and fragile trail permissions.

One user even has this on their page:
“I understand some may believe the features I have added are “secret” OSM’s policy is to map what is on the ground, aka the Ground Truth policy”

First of all, these trails are secret (there is no ambiguity about it), or at the very least, not publicly well known and not available on any trail maps, official or otherwise. There are often very good reasons for this.

In no particular order:

Some trails are ‘pro’ level trails and have been in the area for decades, only being shown to users who have the ability to ride them. Advertising these trails, even in the age of influencers, has been discouraged in order to keep riders safe and avoid having to shut down the trail completely.

Some trails exist in a very fragile permissive state where the land owners, managers and trail orgs are aware of the trails but they are allowed to continue to exist because they aren’t mapped and trail usage is relatively low. Increase in usage and making these trails publicly available seriously risks this status quo that everyone is currently happy with. See here for an example of trails getting shutdown: https://nsmb.com/articles/seymour-trail-closures-announced/
Also see the history of Dark Crystal in Whistler or how Upper babylon was removed from all the maps in the recent past.
Another example: Squamish secret saunas. Overuse via publication led to their removal.

‘Loamers’ often fall in and out of favour and often only last for a few years then get left to go back to nature. This process doesn’t take long. When these trails are made public they stick around a lot longer that they would otherwise.

Local Search and Rescue and emergency services already know where these trails are, so there is no additional benefit to adding them to OSM expressly for that purpose.

Trails are often added with incorrect and incomplete data, meaning when someone does arrive to ride them they have no idea what to expect, and it’s often an expert/pro level trail that they wouldn’t have attempted had they had proper information from the start.

Downstream consumers of OSM data either don’t respect the various tags that indicate a trail is unsanctioned/discouraged/whatever and/or don’t make the other data (is it exists) about the trail available to the user. Again, this just increases user danger and leads to bad experiences. It is irresponsible to supply data to other consumers if they continue to show trails that should not be public.

Mapping isn’t a neutral action, nor is it consequence free. You may assume you are just mapping ‘whats on the ground’ but mapping is like observing visible light. It changes state merely by the action of observation. The same is true of the mapping activities discussed above. Adding these trails not only rides roughshod over decades of trail work and advocacy, it assumes a net zero or positive effect when that isn’t the case. Access is threatened and users will get into dangerous situations. Just because a trail exists physically does not mean it has been granted social, legal, or ethical consent for publication. Many of these trails exist only due to an unspoken agreement between riders, builders and landowners/managers. Mapping them breaks that agreement and risks permanent loss.

These trails are not ‘hidden treasures’ waiting to be discovered. They are part of a complex social contract. Breaking that contract by mapping (and hence publicizing and promoting) them risks the loss of access for everyone.

To return to the user and earlier quote: I understand some may believe the features I have added are “secret” ... <snip>," and does not remove features, such as trails, for subjective, arbitrary, or political reasons.

These reasons aren’t subjective, arbitrary or political. They are reasoned and how trail riding/building/advocacy communities in these areas have operated for a long time. The OSM community shouldn’t have the right to overpower the wishes of the local land users and managers.

At the very least, please, please ensure that when unsanctioned trails are added they are complete with the appropriate difficulty rating, metadata to show that they are sensitive trails and should be treated as such and not shown by default on the basemap of downstream data users.

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I definitely agree with this.
Another reason for that is that people not interested in MTB do not want to be routed through impassable for them way when cycling.

And for whether presence of MTB trails is desired/accepted/wanted is definitely a political issue and varies depending on location, and in some or many cases is likely controversial topic. And different people may have different opinion.
I expect that in some cases at least people map illegal MTP trails that are damaging or dangerous for other people with express purpose of shutting them down.
Whether achieving this is a good thing is definitely a political question. (I can easily imagine cases where I would take one position and also case where I would have an exact opposite one)

I would want to add that marking illegal MTP trails as cycleways is definitely wrong.
Many of them should be tagged with bicycle=no as cycling there is illegal. Or altogether with access=no as in some cases walking or any other access is also illegal. Some may qualify for vehicle=no

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I don’t know who you are, so I won’t assume if you are any one that been involved in any recent discussions. Have you read the community response first? There are already attempts to acknowledge your concerns in the standpoint. Why can't I delete this trail? - OpenStreetMap Wiki
OSM users can’t “ensure” how renderers show them. While there’s a =path vagueness problem, it’s basically treated as unknown when unspecified. There is already community outreach, but applications still have the ultimate control and responsibility. People can’t do the work for them.

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First of all I absolutely agree with you and @Mateusz_Konieczny on tagging these paths with the appropriate tags (i.e. not highway=cycleway and the appropriate mtb-related tags and descriptive tags).

I should also say that I hail from Finland that has extensive FtR laws that tilts my perspective. I do, thus, take issue with blanket statements like:

I’d say that if a trail exists in nature (i.e. not inside someone’s home, or walled off in an unmarked warehouse where you need to know a password and fill in an NDA to enter), it’s very existence is absolutely a direct consent to publish it on a map. I don’t know how far you intended to take the analogy of observing visible light, but I think it applies perfectly. Anything directly observable in non-private nature is not secret. A better analogy would be a private footpath on a private yard. Of course we map those, and add access=private to them!

Emphasis added by me. So there is very much ambiguity about their secrecy, they very much are not a secret.

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And for whether presence of MTB trails is desired/accepted/wanted is definitely a political issue and varies depending on location, and in some or many cases is likely controversial topic.

if they exist they can be mapped, in OpenStreetMap it is not complicated.

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It would help if you actually said what country you’re talking about, because expectations and practice around access vary vastly from country to country. I’m guessing the US because some of the placenames you mention sound vaguely US-ish and, well, some Americans do seem to have a cognitive block around the concept that other countries might exist, but you haven’t actually said that.

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This concerns the mapping of MTB trails in British Columbia, Canada

See these changeset discussions for more context:

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As currently mapped (highway=path; name=Black Shark; surface=ground) clearly information is lacking.

Should the trail be in OSM? If it exists, yes. However, what are the access rights here? Do the “local trail building and riding communities” have a legal access right to this area and a legal right to build this trail? If not, then something like access=private should be added. Is it an informal trail? From the description it sounds pretty informal to me so informal=yes would surely make sense. A bunch of other tags exist for things like MTB difficulty, surface (beyond the very general ground) and smoothness.

Simply deleting things like this that exist and are easily observable will only lead to them being added back in with a crap tag like highway=path and minimal detail, resulting in OSM data consumers not knowing why they should not be shown.

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Welcome to OSM and thanks for sharing your thoughts with the OSM community!

The big question that arises here is: How can I tell that this path I’m walking on is such a trail? We’ll deal with this question further below.

OSM itself isn’t a map; rather some data consumers produce maps based on OSM geodata. The data can also be used for other purposes. So our goals aren’t necessarily incompatible.

Fact is that due to the decentralised structure of OSM, there really isn’t any other way to go about it. Let me repeat that: The Ground Truth Policy exists as a matter of practicality.
Others have already pointed out that after deletion, someone else could just readd the path - but with even less information. The better way is to add the necessary information (for some of which there isn’t established tagging, admittedly, though that can only be changed by engaging with relevant groups).

Again, if I stumble upon it by accident, how can I tell that it’s secret? But you bring up a very good point:

There are lots of reasons and I agree with them. The solution, however, isn’t to delete the paths, but to put these reasons into OSM.
As for data consumers, while that is entirely free from control of OSM proper, you may find it more useful to contact some of the more popular ones to get them to support relevant tags which benefits others in your situation too.

As you yourself recognised in your list of reasons, those wishes are unspoken. You are asking us to make a determination (to remove the way), when there is nothing indicating that it must not be mapped.
So the only way to actually enforce this request would be to strictly monitor the entire area - and as we, the OSM community, can’t check what the “wishes of the local land users and managers” are, they’d have to do it (or you) and make a request everytime it happens, outlining the specific reasons and providing evidence that this is still the case.
Much easier to just provide the reasons tagged on the way. Which leads me to your last paragraph:

This is exactly what we want and how we would like the map to be. Some of that still has some way to go - as many such cases go unnoticed since they are deliberately kept secret. But we are working on it and would be very grateful if you could assist us in this endeavour, by contributing directly, or helping us establish appropriate tagging rules (which can then be considered by data consumers) where they are missing.

This, I think, is the way forward, and your decision to engage with the community can and in my opinion will make the map better for everyone.

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A better guess is Canada based on their accounts history.

Seems like this might be user JimmyJones999.

And when they got banned, they made a new account called MomentSkiGuy to evade the ban.

So violating the OSM Foundation policy on ban evasion.

I’m sure people are going to try and argue/reason with this person, but this person doesn’t seem to be operating in good faith. Most people create new accounts and remove data not knowing OSM Best practices and policies, they don’t get one of the Core Values is “Ground Truth” and they don’t understand what that means. Normally you can just talk with them, and they will understand, even if they don’t like it.

But this person seems to understand perfectly well and does not care. The worst thing a new user can be is confidently deceitful. We rely on change set comments to be honest from local mappers. So when you see a change comment that says “removed this road because it’s private property”, well that’s an invalid reason to remove it, but at least they were honest about why.

The user JimmyJones999 left deceitful and mocking comments on their change sets, Things like:
“No trail here”
“Removed trails that no longer exist on the ground”
“No trail here, initial uploaded is confused. No vandalism. Trail does not exist.”
“shouldnt be on the map. Blah blah blah OSM policy.”

Later, this user admitted that some of these trails DO exist, but they are “secret” or are too “pro” for normal bikers.

So they were using the language you’d normally see in an honest and correct changeset, but being purposely deceitful to sneakily delete the trails they don’t personal approve should be on any map. Then they got caught and argued.

Now they come and post here trying to take some moral high ground on the issue…

I have no conclusion, just wanted to point out the context of who you are talking to.

Edit: Oh it’s way worst, I didn’t even look at the admin message why JimmyJones999 was banned. It was just another sockpuppet account for these banned accounts. So this person is also a cereal vandal.
user/FU eerib
user/FU eerib2
user/FU eerib3
user/Easel3518

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I’ll respond to this first, as the others will require more time, but please play the ball and not the man.
You’re also wrong about the socket puppet accounts.
Please address the points in the post please rather than defaming me.

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How can I tell that this path I’m walking on is such a trail?
The user who has added all these trails knows fine well they shouldn’t be mapped and are kept private in mtb specific mapping apps.

OSM itself isn’t a map; rather some data consumers produce maps based on OSM geodata.
Semantics without a difference in the real world.

the better way is to add the necessary information
This assumes that the trail in question should be mapped at all which is the underlying issue at hand. As a matter of practicality it’s fine, but there must be exceptions that can be used when the situation requires it. In fact, Im sure this is already the case when it comes to things like military bases, no? |

Again, if I stumble upon it by accident, how can I tell that it’s secret?
These trails are being added by aggregating data from other online sources, and not being stumbled upon in the wild. At this point you’ll no doubt say ‘aha, so they’re not secret’, but aggregation and publication of that aggregated data usage data is a different issue, and in cases of data security it’s very much considered a security risk.

The solution, however, isn’t to delete the paths, but to put these reasons into OSM.
Only if OSM can ensure that the data is handled properly, which it cant/isnt/doesnt want to.
Its like if I had a dangerous but fun toy in my garden, maybe an unsecured swimming pool. If a child breaks in and dies, thats on me for not having a secured pool, even though it’s not my fault the child broke in. If the data isnt being handled properly it shouldnt be returned in the API unless explicitly asked for.

As you yourself recognised in your list of reasons, those wishes are unspoken. You are asking us to make a determination (to remove the way), when there is nothing indicating that it must not be mapped.
So the only way to actually enforce this request would be to strictly monitor the entire area - and as we, the OSM community, can’t check what the “wishes of the local land users and managers” are, they’d have to do it (or you) and make a request everytime it happens, outlining the specific reasons and providing evidence that this is still the case.

I understand the point here, and it’s true, but given that OSM users in general are likely mapping their local areas, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that they at least try and make a determination on the subject and then act reasonably when it’s pointed out to them.

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The policy is exactly why I wrote the post in the first place.

OSM users can’t “ensure” how renderers show them

OSM has a responsibility by publishing this data to ensure it’s used appropriately, and if it’s not being used appropriately it shouldn’t be published.

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This is the foundational issue that my post tries to address and needs to fixed.

This is already an issue with users adding trails that they have no knowledge of other than what they can find by sleuthing online.
MTB focused mapping apps have taken the approach of ‘add the trail and we’ll ensure its not publicly shown on maps, ride logs or heat maps’. This is the correct approach if things “must be mapped”.

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Quite difficult and quite unreal.
The closest and simplest example I can think of is the use of OSM data in military tactics. We should erase every single way on the planet because they can potentially be used by any army that wants to invade a country? At least the OSM map style has already been seen in the background of a military press conference.

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Go on then, which military base infrastructure has data available elsewhere like Strava or satellite imagery but censored in OSM? Please post links.

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[I’m intentionally ignoring the meta discussion and assuming completely good faith!]

I’m noticing a disconnect here. You’re referencing agreements and social contracts that do seem to exist - no issue there - then saying that mapping the trails on OSM breaks those agreements/contracts.

However, as you’ve noted, those agreements are “between riders, builders, and landowners/managers” - meaning that, as you’ve noted by omission, OSM and its contributors are not party to these agreements and thus not bound by them.

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Good point. This tells me, adding access=private should be the OSM way of handling such?

Personally, I myself would not map them at all. Only yesterday came over this one:

Illegal_MTB_Downhil_Trail
Illegal_MTB_Downhil_Trail1200×800 358 KB

The initial vertical drop is 2m, but with a bit of speed a rider can jump 10 m horizontal distance and 5m vertical (measured in administrative GIS.) I do not consider this a highway=* whatever value. Reading on here with interest, looking forward to learn how to do when I happen over something mapped. I am not an expert into mtb_scale, so I guess telling me to tag that of no help :frowning:

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That’s what I’m telling you, no I’m not going to engage “the points” with someone not working in good faith and is purposely deceitful. I reserve conversations like that for the honest.

Admin says these are all sockpuppet accounts, not me.

This is the person we are dealing with: Easel3518

image
image1780×665 84.4 KB

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There are very few, but military bases are not among them. What protects all of them are the lengths they go to to maintain the secrecy. Military bases are heavily secured, only to be accessed by authorised personnel. We can map the outline/fence and some buildings from aerial imagery - but that’s it. Anyone can see that they are not allowed there. We don’t have the data to map them.

How do you keep those trails secret? Can you give some assurances that another random user won’t just readd the trail?

I strongly reject this notion. We do not restrict what others can do with our data, it is free as in freedom for anyone.

I made my comment with local mappers in mind. Your description leaves nothing to speak of to make such determination that the trail may be hidden on purpose before mapping the trails - unless you made it public to everyone in a 100 mile radius that these specific trails must not be mapped.
Compared to that it’s much easier to add the required tags, so they can see when editing: “Oh, there is already a trail, don’t have to do anything. Great!”

That’s a much better outcome for everyone.

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