OpenStreetMap
Hello everyone.
Recently, I’ve been trying to map National Recreation Trails in OSM. the NRT program will designate a ‘system’ as a national recreation trail, generally meaning all of the trails within a park or other public land.
I want to represent this on the map, but it seems to be beyond the scope of the type=route relations.
I’ve been considering using this: osm.wiki/Relation:network to try and represent these, but I ran into problems with this as well. I tried interpreting the documentation, but it was written so confusingly that I could not understand how to use this relation on the map at all. I asked on the talk page, but I’m still confused on the meaning of this relation.
Additionally, there are National Recreation Trails designated to places serving ATVs or ORVs. I don’t know if this is some redneck thing that the Europeans don’t have or what, but there was no documented tag for ATV or ORV paths on the wiki. so I also created the page route=atv. I’ve been working on expanding this page as well.
Right now I’m using type=route for these system NRTs, but I feel that it’s probably incorrect and I’d love input from others.
Thanks, SherbetS
Discussion
Comment from BCNorwich on 25 May 2022 at 06:56
Hi, You might like to look at these relation types:- Relation:superroute = osm.wiki/Relation:superroute, Relation:route_master = osm.wiki/Relation:route_master and Super-relation = osm.wiki/Super-relation
I have used the Super-relation to combine all walking and cycling trails/routes, start points, guideposts, etc of a city’s trails. Thus integrating everything into an overall network.
Regards Bernard.
Comment from عثمان ਉਸਮਾਨ bgo_eiu on 5 June 2022 at 16:16
It’s anyone’s guess what network is being used for or what it’s intended for exactly, but my interpretation at the moment is:
Route master associates variants of a single route (different direction, branches etc)
Super route associates legs of a route which form a larger contiguous piece. For example, the entirety of the Appalachian Trail would be better described as a relation of relations than one huge one
A network describes differing routes which together have a common function
I have been in the beginning stages of using network relations to associate school bus trips with their designated “zones.” The reason for doing this is a school bus service zone could include a combination of general purpose city bus routes that happen to serve a school without modification, modified variants of city bus routes which run during school start and end times, and dedicated school tripper routes. Some of these already have to be grouped with route masters for their respective variants of the same route, or could be used as legs in non-school journeys so it seemed like using “network” was the only viable way to create relations for the school tripper service zones.
With foot routes, I think my interpretation of how to map a system would depend on how the routes are used. If they can be understood as “legs” in one bigger route, super route seems appropriate. If they’re understood as distinct routes with no overlapping function between them, but which complement/connect to each other, coming up with a value for key:network that groups them seems sufficient rather than creating a relation for the whole system (and a corresponding network:wikidata tag). If the foot routes are parallel, a route master with two route relations could be used (like for urban foot routes I plan on creating a version for each side of the sidewalk and associating them like that). If the same foot route A has a reason to be associated with foot route B for some purposes, but with foot route C for other purposes, that’s where I would consider creating network relations.