OpenStreetMap
Just got started a few nights ago. Figured I'd start giving back since I downloaded the maps recently for a trip to Europe. They were great for getting around. I geocache so I had a collection of tracks for several trails in and around Harriman State Park in NY and Rockland County as well. So for starters, I spent a few hours the last couple nights, after uploading my tracks, tracing over my tracks for the trails in the parks. For those checking up, many of my tracks are private since they also included were I live. I'll see if I can edit the tracks to remove the private data so I can make them public. I also made some lakes based on the satellite photo data.
I guess any comments advising me how to tag better would be appreciated. The descriptions on the wiki pages, with the pictures, seem to be for Europe and some of the terms are unfamiliar to me. I suppose a consensus has already been reached on how to label items in the USA. For example, I'm not sure if I should label a hiking trail a "public footpath" or a "dirt track" or something else. In the USA, a "track" is usually associated with sports, a neat oval for racing.
So if you look at my additions, most of the ones that show up as dotted red lines, are tagged "footpath" and are hiking trails in the woods. Then I also made some others as well. The local park authority calls them "woods roads". They are wide enough for a single 4x4 vehicle. They are gated off for authorized vehicles only, I've seen park rangers use them. Some allow mountain bikes, and others allow horses. There are other "woods roads" that were included in the TIGER data that don't allow cars either. As of now, someone looking at the map might think that they can drive their private vehicle on these roads. Pine Meadow Rd. is a good example. I'd describe it as a restricted "woods road" and not anything like a "residential road". I might edit some of these roads at some point as well.
Is there a park in the USA that has been edited well enough for me to use as a template?
Some of the trails I added have blazes, paint markings on the trees and rocks to help guide hikers. Is there a good way to tag that useful information on the map?
I know some of the trail names as common knowledge. Other trail names I have to look up on a copyrighted map. Is it okay for me to use a copyrighted map that I bought or found on the internet to find information for the tags?
Discussion
Comment from wallclimber21 on 11 November 2009 at 04:55
Harriman State Park was one of my hiking ground when I was living on the East Coast. :-)
Use tracks for dirt or gravel roads that can be done by a car or 4x4.
For hiking and biking trails, there isn't general agreement. Either use 'footway'/'cycleway' or 'path'. I'm using the latter for very narrow trails like the A.T. and add additional tags such as 'foot=yes', 'bicycle=no', but others would mark that footway instead.
The important part is that, at least, it's on the map. :-)
Comment from nmixter on 11 November 2009 at 05:08
For the trail names, you can usually get them from the official state or county park web site. Usually these maps are for publicity and freely distributed. You just have to be careful when copying info from a third party that may have copyrighted the data.
Comment from wallclimber21 on 11 November 2009 at 05:17
Even trail names from the park website may be copyrighted, so I tend to stay away from them. I only use names for trails where I've actually been myself and I often take pictures of the name plates to not forget. That's really the only 'safe' way.
It's normal that TIGER data will show up as 'residential'. That's the default assignement and it's pretty much always incorrect in parks. :-) They're often also very much inaccurate from the situation on the ground. If you *know* the place, feel free to delete, change, do whatever you like to make it more accurate.
For an example of a US map, have a look here:
osm.org/?lat=37.31788&lon=-122.18589&zoom=16&layers=B000FTF
The SF bay area is very well mapped. When I started mapping a year ago, pretty much all parks were a blank slate. Now they are many hundreds of trails. A few people can have a big impact if the bug bites!
I see you have mapped some trails as 'bridleway'. I haven't seen this tag used a lot of US parks, but it should be good enough for the kind of trails in Harriman.
Comment from 42429 on 11 November 2009 at 13:44
In the United States, there are still no comprehensive national tagging rules. However, in Europe, the tagging ruleset has evolved gradually:
Public roads in urban areas are tagged as residential. The mappers who have imported government data (TIGER) have made the mistake to assume that each non-classified road in the United States was a residential road in an urban area.
Public roads in rural areas are tagged as unclassified. Private roads which connect to a single house should be tagged as service roads.
Non-public roads in rural areas which could be used by cars are tagged as track. Tracktype indicates which vehicles could use this track - tracktype=grade1 means a paved track without regular car traffic.
Ways which cannot be used by cars (but maybe by motorcycles and small ATV) are tagged as path.
Cycleways and footpaths are created by official dedication. E.g., a former railroad track could be tagged as cycleway. Bridleways are intended mainly for horses (and their riders).
The difference between path, footpath and cycleway is confusing and there is still no definition which attribute can be used for distinguishing them. Are these ways accessible for wheelchair users? A path is rather not suitable for wheelchair users whereas a footpath should be suitable for them. Everybody has it's own ideas where a way is suitable for him or not.
If you want to mark thes trails explicitly, you may add a sac_scale_tag. (See sac_scale=* ) However, the sac_scale is rarely used even in Europe. The easiest way to add a footpath is still to tag it as footpath.
Concerning trail names: Facts are free, only fiction has copyright!
Comment from Anna_AG on 12 November 2009 at 14:06
Public // Private Traces
Hi I understand your desire to remove your home from traces,Using JOSM with the plugin 'EditGPX' will allow you to edit and remove parts of trails that are either noisy and thus misleading, or simply stuff you don't want to put up.
Ideally as much of your traces should be public thus everyone can benefit from the data, but very glad that you are putting back in and have become an OSMer. ( See my entry today @bri%20g/diary/8592 )
RE Maps have a look at the pre-made Cloudmade files here for Garmin / Tomtom etc - http://downloads.cloudmade.com/
Cheers bri