Paths, Areas not showing on all layers & General queries

General talk
1

I have been editing ‘Ulu Choh Dirt Park’ for a few weeks now and I’m encountering the following problems:

  1. Not all the paths I’ve created are showing up on ‘Cycle Map’?
  2. Nearly all areas created do not show up on any of the layers?
  3. Public users don’t seem to be able to view the detail info added about each path (width, condition, difficulty etc)?
  4. Unable to see path or areas over layed on the aerial footage outside of edit mode?
  5. Is there a way to merge the topographic data from ‘Cycle Map’ on the aerial (bing map) imagery whilst retaining the paths, areas etc?
2

  1. The most likely reason is that you didn’t allow long enough. At times it can take a few hours for the primary layer to update, but the others can take up to about a week if you catch them at the wrong part of the cycle. Otherwise you need to point us to the changesets so that we can analyse them for ourselves.

  2. Many features are not rendered. The main layer is provided to assist mappers; not as the primary means of accessing the map data.

  3. The ? button, or the show data tick box should provide access to the underlying data. Again the rendered maps on the openstreetmap.org page are there to help mappers; they are not tehre for the general public.

  4. As the purpose of the site is to assist peopel editing the map, that is quirte reasonable. There may also be restrictions in the licences for the use of the aerial imagery that restrict it to such usage. You should find someone who has a valid business model for providing end users maps with the detail you seek. Also note that, in general features mapped from different sources, or even different generations of the same source may be misaligned by several metres compared with a particular set of aerial imagery. This is particularly true if the there are height differences. It is not uncommon for parallax errors to exceed about 10% of the height difference, and there have been places in important cities where it is much greater.

  5. Yes. You build your own rendering tool chain and render the maps that you want. The style information for the standard layer is publicly available.

3

I’ve found what I assume are your changesets.

Firstly, always explain the purpose and scope of the changeset in the changeset comment; you have no changeset comments. Also, make sure that you indicate the source of your mapping, preferably in a changeset source tag, but if your editor does not provide for this, in the actual comment. In my view, for what you are doing, you probably should not be using a newbie editor; you should be using JOSM, which almost forces you to do this. This information makes it much easier to audit changes and can help disprove any claim that information was copied from guidebooks or other maps, neither of which are allowed. My biggest worry here is that you may have imported this data from a guide book.

On the most recent changesets the paths are rendering on the cycle layer, however, it would seem reasonable to suppress at least http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/359274173 from that layer as neither cycle nor foot access is permitted. Actually, I would say that path is the wrong main tag as paths always have foot or cycle access. I also don’t understand how it is possible to allocate mtb ratings to a way on which the use of mountain bikes is never permitted.

The one area that I could find on a quick look is also rendering.

4

Many thanks for your feedback.

I was aware of the delay in updates but it’s been at least a week since I did the edits.

The Paths/ Trails are for Dirt Bikes so the intent was to use the MTB trail ratings to provide additional info and difficulty ratings etc of the trails but at the same time I’ve restricted access to foot and cycle as such access would be extremely dangerous! If Paths are not the correct tag which would be correct?

I have imported my own GPX data combined with the aerial imagery to determine where the trails/ paths are, I haven’t used any guide books. This is most definitely the first time any of these trails have been mapped!

I will try the JOSM and research the render tools you mention.

5

You have motor_vehicle=yes, which would indicate that highway=track was the best category. The wiki for that does say to use highway=path if it is not suitable for two track vehicles (i.e. only suitable for vehicles with all wheels in a single line) on the other hand the wiki for paths does seem to discourage their use for any sort of motor vehicle. If you actually mean it is only for motorcycles, I think you need to get advice from mappers in the country concerned, as I would say this was sufficiently borderline that it might be country specific.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Path_controversy suggests that path is either not wide enough for two track vehicles or no motor vehicles allowed, except where specific categories are listed. 2m seems to me to be wide enough for two small motor cars, so I would say that the particular example was a track by this definition, unless specifically designated (preferably with a sign post) for motorcycle use.

Looking more closely, you access restrictions are not internally consistent. You have a default of permissive, but you then basically override that for all the vehicle types, by saying there is a right of way for motor cycles through heavy goods vehicles, and the use of horses, bicycles and feet is forbidden. There are no real categories left for the permissive default.

Also, these permissions represent the legal status, not an evaluation of the risk. This particularly combination would be typical of a motorway in the UK. Some major roads might also be very dangerous for pedestrians, but that would not be a valid reason for specifying foot=no.

I don’t know the specifics of this area, but the default access may well be no, with permissive access for motor cycle. However, I’m not entirely sure why a landowner would give permissive access to vehicles which tend to damage the land, without also giving it to less harmful modes of access, so I’m wondering if this is really access=permissive with motor cycle access set to designated, or even access=yes, with motor cycles designated.

foot=no means you are likely to be threatened with prosecution for trespass if you walk there. access=permissive means that the landowner allows people to use the land by any mode of transport, but could remove that permission at any time without having to go through any official channels. motor_vehicle=yes means that anything from a motor scooter to a tank can just turn up and use it, although they may have to pay a toll to do so; they cannot be refused at the whim of the landowner.

There is a possibility of foot=discouraged, etc., but this should only be used if there are signs saying it is unsuitable for pedestrians, not simply based on a assessment of the danger of walking there.