2025-11-15 –, Area
This talk looks into the complexity of hiking and cycling routes and the new functions of waymarkedtrails.org to show complex route relations. It gives you (slightly opinionated) hints on what to tag and how waymarkedtrails.org can help when creating and maintaining route relations in OpenStreetMap.
Hiking and cycling routes are very popular in OpenStreetMap. Thousands of them are already mapped in OpenStreetMap and dozens of applications and apps use them. Recreational routes are not shown on the main openstreetmap.org
website but waymarkedtrails.org has been around for many years to make sure mappers can see and check their work.
You'd think that mapping of a route should be a simple affair: follow the ways and put them into a relation. But reality is full of little pitfalls and question marks. There are diversions, alternatives, route markers and outlooks. And when does a trail count as waymarked anyway?
This talk gives you an overview of how to handle routes that don't just go straight. It gives you (slightly opinionated) hints on what to tag and how waymarkedtrails.org can help when creating and maintaining route relations in OpenStreetMap.
tagging routes hiking cycling
Sarah has been active in OpenStreetMap for more than a decade. She's followed many hiking paths to get them on the map and maintains waymarkedtrails.org. She works as a freelancer these days developing software for OpenStreetMap like the geocoders Nominatim and Photon.