Hi & Welcome to OSM,

Thanks for this addition. I'm not sure why anyone would think there was a way through here, there is no path marked & AFAIK the area behind Mr Man's is private land. Only marked paths on OSM can be treated as viable routes for pedestrians, and even then access should be checked.

However, you've distorted the building to close the gap. I've therefore removed your edit & added an actual wall, which will show up as a thin black line.

If there's a specific reason for this edit, such as people making unwarrranted assumptions about where they can go, do let me know. It is often possible to add more relevant details to help in such cases.

Regards,

Jerry aka SK53

I dont know about some of these grass areas. Substantial parts of the area around Marefield are ploughed crops. (Surveyed in June 2015 & again 2018)

@malcolmgc: you're ahead of many of us them.

I distinguish between desire lines & informal paths (although I think all desire lines are informal paths).

A desire line is from A to B for a particular purpose: the following is a very obvious desire line from the gate to the scout hut (https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/tsenzuJQ5lRNE5yLww9fM8). Typical desire lines are from one gate to another of a park, little cut-throughs out of retail car parks to avoid walking the long way round.

Informal paths in general are created by people doing things. A lot more have arisen in places around me during the Covid lockdowns: this one is close to the scout hut path, but is used to enable bigger loops https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=52.95125816993464&lng=-1.1819407599981135&z=17&focus=photo&pKey=T1mKW9AWIsElvnA9SW9Fx3 (I havent added it to OSM as a) the path line is indistinct; & b) I dont want everyone using it).

Desire line paths which are heavily used may end up as proper dedicated paths. This example (way/34330968) was a desire line for students to reach the library & the grass never recovered. After about 25 years the university gave in & put in a paved path. I believe a university in the US didnt have any paths when they opened a new campus, but just waited to see where people walked and paved the heaviest desire lines.

The tag(s) are probably most useful in urban areas where the distinctions tend to be clearer.

Hi Malcolm,

I think your conclusion is sensible.

There is no real difference between highway=footway and highway=path in the UK other than for the latter it is essential to include information about which transport modes can use it. In other countries (notably Germany) highway=cycleway means a cycle track only accessible to cyclists and therefore share-use facilities tend to be mapped as paths. I think some have used path in rural areas and footway in urban ones. A final one is using path when it is not known what access permissions might be.

Therefore, in general, it is better to use one of the more explicit highway tags and perhaps focus on adding surface to help differentiate town & country style paths.

The footway=sidewalk & footway=crossing are useful subtags.

Jerry aka SK53

I've already corrected it: I was an intern there in the past. Also corrected the landuse which someone else had changed to military, probably because IGN & others have blurred it out.

Why do you think the Reactor Hall of ILL is a storage tank? It is a containment building for a nuclear reactor.

Hi Marc Marc,

I'm not sure the tag existed when I did this. Golf clubs in UK can be a bit complicated as some function as private members bars (amenity=social_club), but I think in this case clubhouse is appropriate, as I think the latter case is mainly true in Scotland. But if the club house is genuinely private (i.e., you need an invitation) then amenity doesn't seem quite right.

The social club style of pub is common in the UK, Ireland, Australia and possibly Canada. They require membership, but usually this can be acquired very easily, or someone will sign you in as a guest. They are much closer to pubs & bars than ordinary clubs.

Jerry

Abney Park may have been an arboretum around 200 years ago, but certainly not now. Since the cemetery company ran out of cash (1970s IIRC) the place became quite wild with trees self-seeding and growing anywhere. It's full of strange things, which are growing wild: Service Tree of Fontainebleau, Various-leaved Hawthorn. Most photos don't do it justice, as when trees are in leaf the canopy cover makes it too dark for decent photos! In many places the graves are completely obscured by vegetation and so it can be treacherous underfoot. It's rightly now a wild place, even if the mix of trees is somewhat eclectic. There are also plenty of native herbs which have colonised. Also there is very little grass, just odd patches near the two gates and along the S boundary.

Jerry

Hi,

Search for some of these terms on the wiki:

* for road width: width or minwidth for the narrowest section. If you make the measurement option available one can now make reasonable measurements on the aerial imagery (or if you feel particularly enthusiastic a tape measure in the field!). In general I'd assume a lanes=1 road was about 4-5 m wide as a default. I believe SomoneElse's rendering shows very narrow roads (https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/map.html#zoom=15&lat=54.209&lon=-1.23322) as well as more detail in rural areas
* traffic density is not really something we can map as it changes over the day and over time (I think there was some effort to map signed quiet ways in the past though). For busy roads there is DoT survey data which people have merged with OSM data when building cycle routers
* surface=asphalt or paved for regular roads
* smoothness : rather subjective, but in use
* tracktype: as the name implies this is for tracks & some service roads, but can be applicable on some very minor public roads (e.g., those with grass growing in the centre)
* giveway signs help establish the road priority even on a network of minor roads so may help (supported in the editor)
* verge (works like the sidewalk tag) to say whether there are (flat) verges on either side of the road (v. useful for walkers if a road is narrow)

Although as Bernard says absence of road markings may not have a well-established tag, it is something which is repeatably observable & I'd say perfectly reasonable to add to OSM.

I think it's an interesting project & probably useful to have one area where someone has approached this systematically.

Jerry aka SK53

Hi Robert,

This edit has alerted me to something I wish I'd been at aware of before in that NSI splits the other Tesco formats/concepts as distinct brands. This was certainly not my original intent when I created the UK retail chains page. The idea was to use a single brand across all properties of the major supermarkets as they created distinct formats. Perhaps not so important for Tesco but certainly for M&S and Co-ops.

I think Geolytix also made a distinction between brand and format in their open retail data. It's certainly how the industry used to talk when I worked in it (although the precise term for "format" may have varied a bit).

Certainly this makes things more consistent, but a bit less useful. Sorry, for potentially crying over spilt milk.

Jerry

Hi,

I dont believe what you have added is a primary link. It really does not reflect what is on the ground. The main road goes from 2 to 3 lanes & the LH lane is a turning lane on to St Peter's St, not a distinct carriageway. It is also controlled by the same set of lights as the main road & you failed to adjust the geometry of the cycle route to interconnect.

Thanks,

Are you sure Ropewalk House has 4 levels? I counted 5 today (3 regular ones & 2 basements).

Thanks for updating this.

Jerry

Hi Jay,

I had wondered why you had made such a specific edit away from your usual haunts. Good luck.

As I walk past twice a day I definitely know that furniture has been removed (also by peeking in at the windows). Much of the removal seemed to be done by staff in hired vans rather than by a professional firm, so had assumed it was a local move. I'll have another shufti this morning: there is another firm named on notices on the front door.

The building was specifically built for Romax, so I imagine they still hold the lease, but whether they'll re-open here or in Ruddington remains to be seen.

Jerry

Hi Jay,

I suspect this might be a bit premature. As far as I know the building is now vacant. Romax have relocated to Ruddington (https://romaxtech.com/events-and-resources/news/romax-move-into-new-uk-headquarters/)
Most office furniture and the picnic tables at the back have been removed. No signage relates to Onyx either.

Jerry

Havent really untangled the two minor power lines heading NNE from substation outside Blaenporth

When I did the Fora da l'Aua path a long time ago (2003) there was a rope or chain on the upper 'grassy' part before reaching the rocks. Is it still there? (In which case it is not mapped).

Please can you not tag tertiary roads with the ref tag: doing so causes endless confusion for people using OSM-based satnavs who will never see signage for them. The consensus of the UK community is to use admin_ref for internal highway authority references such as these C-road numbers.

I haven't looked in detail at which roads you have moved to tertiary, but internal HA references are not necessarily a good guide to what fellow mappers may see on the ground. For instance it's inconsistent to have Boyn Hill Road as tertiary and not All Saints Avenue (a consensus held over 16 years that these were just broad residential roads).

Also FOI requests are not necessarily admissable info in OpenStreetMap (they do not imply a copyright waiver).

Regards,

Jerry

I'm reverting these changes, not because they are wrong, but because safely merging the older values of name tags with the changes you made is altogether too complex in a single operation. I don't have time to review all these objects right now, but will endeavour to do so over the next 3-4 days.

Sorry about this, but it's important to consider that OSM data has many uses.

This is the changeset changeset/101266567

Jerry

Hi,

When altering names in the Gaeltacht can you please take care to move any existing ("english") name into "name:en". It is no longer possible to search for things like Great Blasket Island: many folk without good knowledge of the Gaelic will not know it by the current name. So someone interested in looking at places mentioned in something like "20 Years a Growing" will not be able to now.

These changes became apparent from someone using the "english" names for genealogy purposes, when most historical census data uses such names.

Regards,

Jerry aka SK53