Gentlebeings, In a discussion today on 'imports,' Martin Koppenhoefer raised a concern that appears to have no answer in current tagging practice. I suspect that it's yet another case where a fairly common case in the US violates a hidden cultural assumption in OSM's data model.
The case in question is government-owned lands that are open to the public but require a permit to access. In a great many cases the permits are free of charge and granted routinely to all who apply. BACKGROUND In my work, this first came up with an import I did this spring of the New York City watershed recreation land boundaries. These are not located in New York City. Rather, they are land in the Catskill Mountains and in the Croton watershed, purchased by New York City to protect its water supply from development. Many of these lands require a permit to access, http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/424230670 is typical. The permit is obtained simply by filling out a Web form, submitting it, and printing out the PDF that is sent back, so it's effectively never denied. Someone on one of the lists proposed using the little-used 'access=permit' (or in this case, 'foot=permit') to tag this case. 'access=private' feels entirely wrong: it's not 'private land; keep out', but rather 'there are a few formalities to comply with.' I stated that agreed with 'access=permit', and the issue passed with little or no further comment. A side note: some of the permit-only areas give access only for the purposes of hunting or fishing, and permit-holders must also hold a valid sporting license from New York State and be present only in the season for the game they're pursuing. I chose not to represent that case in OSM, since the site from which the permit is obtained has details. THE CURRENT PROJECT Now I'm working on a separate project - a reimport of the New York State DEC Lands database. The last import was in 2009 and, in addition to being out of date, was referenced to the wrong datum (WJS84 vs NAD27) and had some topological problems (unclosed ways, self-intersections, even multipolygons with inner ways misidentified as outer and vice versa). That import has two more places with similar permission regimes: (1) The High Peaks Wilderness http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6360488 . There is an extremely simple permit regime there. Carbon-paper forms are available at the trailheads if one enters on a trail (as nearly everyone does). You simply fill one out, sign it, put the top copy in a letterbox on the kiosk and take the bottom copy with you. Technically, this is required only in the Eastern High Peaks Zone (east of the ridge that includes Nye, Street and MacNaughton Mountains), but the boundary is indefinite and very few hikers ever approach that ridge from the west. (2) The Long Island DEC nature reserves (except for Ridge Conservation Area) require a free permit, again obtained for free by filling out a form on a web site. I'm fine with 'access=yes' (or 'foot=yes') for the High Peaks; dealing with the formailities does not require any advance planning on the part of the traveller.. I proposed 'access=permit' for the Long Island reserves, and that was when people challenged the idea. REQUIREMENTS My basic requirement is to discriminate between the three cases: 'private - keep out', 'permission needed' and 'no permission needed'. I have various commercial trail maps that show the three cases with distinct rendering. It's very useful in trip planing; "do I need to remember to bring my NYC access card?" If any two of the three are tagged alike, they cannot be rendered differently in maps that I produce. The last couple of times that I raised the argument that "things tagged alike cannot be rendered differently," several people accused me of "tagging for the renderer." That rather misses the point. I'm entirely willing to adapt my rendering to whatever tagging scheme is settled on. But things tagged alike cannot, even in principle, be rendered differently, whatever renderer is used. ALTERNATIVES I favor 'access=permit' since it is succinct and expresses the intention that a permit is required. 'access=private' does not convey the idea that permission is routinely granted. 'access=permissive' does not convey the fact that permission must be obtained. One alternative that was suggested was 'access=no foot:conditional=permissive @ permit_holder' - but that tagging is surely not widely accepted. taginfo.openstreetmap.org turns up only a handful of uses of 'permit_holder' in any cpntext, and they are not consistent enough to establish that any of them is following accepted practice. Moreover, there appears to be a formal syntax for the access conditions that is incompletely specified. JOSM appears not to like any specification that I've tried to enter. Martin points out that this is a better forum than 'talk-us' or 'imports' for raising the issue. Do the people here have any better idea how to proceed? Thanks Kevin _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
