Editing a hiking trail in OSM

I’ve noticed that certain parts of a trail in my town show up on CityStrides and other parts do not. It’s not a regular hiking trail in the general sense - it’s more of a horseback riding trail that spans about 140 miles. It winds along private property boundaries for the duration of its time in my town, and while it’s technically legal to run on it (I think?), I’d be going through cornfields, foot-high grass pastures, and service roads for farmers to access their fields and barns.

On OSM, most of the trail is designated as a “Path” which CityStrides won’t put nodes on. But there is a stretch designated as “Track/Land Access Road” which CityStrides does count. How might I edit this in a way on OSM to remove its nodes from the list on CS? Does a node get created when a road/path is open to a certain “Allowed Access” type?

:link: My profile link :

Conversations like this are generally outside of my expertise, but I can pass along some barely helpful info. :sweat_smile:

This is the query used to get street/node info. It’s entirely possible that the query needs to be modified, as opposed to tag updates in OSM.

1 Like

So quick, thanks James! In person there are signs saying the area is private… despite it being an extremely obscure public-use trail. That link is helpful, maybe I’ll find a way to edit accordingly.

If you can share some links to Way records in OSM, that could help anyone reading along who might be able to help.

I have run into quite a few of these “Track/Land Access Road” streets in the towns I have run. I don’t mind trail running, so I typically go ahead and run them, but it annoys me that they add to the street count, making it not match the official street count for the town. They show up in CityStrides primarily because they have a name. Here in CT the mountain bike community seems to be the crew who either adds them to OSM or edits them to make them show as they do. In some cases I have reverted them from “Track/Land Access Road” to “Path”, as a Track Road would be one which could be navigated by a motor vehicle and many of the ones they have marked as Track roads are really just single track trails.

As far as the private piece goes; In many cases these track roads are publicly accessible, but the land on either side of them is private, so make sure that it truly is a private road/trail before updating that tag.

1 Like

I have had many of these in my county. I always waited until i went past them but each one is really access for a farmer, for a railrosd company or to a telecom tower. Not all were marked private but if i went running in the middle of a farmers field and some habe a fence I am putting myself at risk in not a good way. I dont think.amy track or land access should be counted. Not roads at all.

For ones like those I reclassify them as “service road” and then mark them private. I have seen some valid “track roads” that are publicly accessible and really are just public dirt roads, so I don’t think removing all track roads would be the correct action, but I do spend a lot of time editing OSM when running new areas.