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.