4 ms·

That's not fun at all, I'd never have imagined such a level of selfishness! What would happen if a well meaning editor added those trails though, is there auto

That's not fun at all, I'd never have imagined such a level of selfishness! What would happen if a well meaning editor added those trails though, is there automated removal or would OSM get in trouble?

namdnay 4y ago
I wouldn’t say selfish, just stuck in the past. The money they collect from selling official guidebooks pays for the maintenance of the trails
- cma 4y ago
  Seems absurd until you look at how America is handling it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33835815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33835815
- swalling 4y ago
  France specifically seems to have a bizarre tolerance for "pay to play" culture and limited access in outdoor recreation. Countries all around them have shown how strong freedom to roam laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam) can work. Those just don't exist in France. Even in the US, trails are largely maintained by volunteers, non-profits, and federal institutions.
  - idoubtit 4y ago
    > France specifically seems to have a bizarre tolerance for "pay to play" culture and limited access in outdoor recreation. Countries all around them have shown how strong freedom to roam laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam) can work. Source? Because that Wikipedia page does not state that: no word about France, Italy and Spain, and just a little "freedom to roam" in UK and Germany. In France, you can enter any open landscape and bivouac there, unless the owner directly states you cannot. The law also forbids to build anything too near to the sea, breaking access to the coast. Private beaches are forbidden. Isn't that more than in most neighbouring countries? > Even in the US, our trails are largely maintained by volunteers, non-profits, and federal institutions. It's the same in France: mostly unpaid helpers from associations and paid workers from municipalities.
    - squidgyhead 4y ago
      Right of passage laws are not part of the code civile, which is the legal system in France. Quebec follows this as well - a hiking/climbing had access removed because someone was thinking of building something. In common law countries areas, the fact that there is a well-used trail that has existed for some time means that people get to pass, regardless of whether it's private property or not. In code-civile jurisdictions, the government steps in and buys part of the land to allow for access.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - julienb_sea 4y ago
    This is completely at odds with the French GR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GR_footpath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GR_footpath) trail. There are legal mandates to require public access to all coastline country wide and they are aggressively enforced. Nothing comparable exists in the US or most countries.
    - swalling 4y ago
      There are more miles of coastline with legally mandated public access in the US than in France. It’s simply handled at the state level not the federal. https://beachapedia.org/Beach_Access https://beachapedia.org/Beach_Access
      - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
        > There are more miles of coastline with legally mandated public access in the US than in France. This sentence is silly. France is smaller than Texas.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > There are more miles of coastline with legally mandated public access in the US than in France. France has 2,000 miles of total coastline (before considering access); Alaska alone has over 6,600. A more sane comparison would be share of coastline with public access, or maybe for some purposes per-capita public access coastline. But absolute miles of public access coastline is silly.
        swalling 4y ago
        If you include Alaska, ~75% of the US coastline has meaningful public access protections. If you don't include Alaska, because people don't sunbathe topless there or whatever, it's like ~20% based on my napkin math? The original comment was "Nothing comparable exists in the US". Given that the entire West Coast and other key beach recreation states like North Carolina and Hawaii have stellar laws on public access, the root comment was simply not true.
  - namdnay 4y ago
    The French hiking federation is a nonprofit, and the vast majority of members are volunteers. But you still have costs, maintaining these routes costs money They’re not charging toll. They’ve got an outdated funding model based on selling maps, and they’re sticking their head in the sand. But what are the other options? Go to the taxpayer? Put up advertising billboards on the trails?
    - swalling 4y ago
      Yes, you use taxpayer funds and volunteer trail crews. Having done trail volunteer maintenance myself on the PCT, I can tell you it works just fine. There are also low cost permits for thru hikers and trailhead parking, which offset some of the cost without creating nasty externalities like getting people lost (which is what happens when you charge for maps).
- lisp-pornstar 4y ago
  How is this "stuck in the past" ? Is the future about building some gates and selling some pass ? You can totally find the GR and walk through it without a map.
  - namdnay 4y ago
    In the past if you wanted to do a GR you would need to buy one of their maps. There’s no way you’re going to plan a 2-week hike without a map Now that’s challenged by the internet
    - lisp-pornstar 4y ago
      What past do you refer to ? GRs exist since 1947. Trails didn't change a lot since then, the principle stayed the same : Red and white signs to mark the path, and "recuperation" of historical paths, made by the circulation of persons (think about Le Saint Jacques de Compostelle, which is the historical path of the pilgrims). It never was "extreme" or "dangerous" to follow a trail without a map in france, you would go through a lot of villages where you could get some water, buy some food, ask for directions and etc... Very logically, if I were to plan a 2 week hike without a map in the past, I would go to a village that's on a GR path, walk one week and then go back. I never felt unconscious or in danger, I had no cellphone and no map
      - namdnay 4y ago
        Believe me, hiking the alpine GRs without a map is asking for trouble. The trails are very well maintained but you need to plan your days, you don’t want to be tired out at 4pm in the middle of a very rocky portion. And if you were to hit fog or heavy rain, a map can be a lifesaver. I’m pretty sure that until the 21st century, nearly everyone doing the gr5 for example would have bought a map
        lisp-pornstar 4y ago
        Well, you picked up one of the most difficult GR, situated in one of the most lethal landscape, with one of the worst weather, of france. That's not the fairest example, because that's not representative of the relative triviality of most of GRs. (Even "difficult" ones seems trivial compared to GR5.
subpixel 4y ago
What's not fun at all is when every pretty place is a GPS coordinate and then swarmed by people who only want to take a picture of themselves and have little regard for nature. It's very common near where I live for the agencies who manage trails and other unique spots to opt-out of GPS-enabled maps (like Avenza) and to actively monitor social media to ask that people refrain from naming 'photo opp' locations.
- subroutine 4y ago
  Why have the trails at all then? This sounds like some gatekeeping bullshit, where you think people who take a few pix along the trail are not enjoying nature correctly. They don't "respect nature".
  - strken 4y ago
    The gatekeeping happens because less experienced people who drive to a spot are more likely to leave used toilet paper and discarded snack wrappers everywhere, not because they're "not enjoying nature properly".
    - plugin-baby 4y ago
      > leave used toilet paper and discarded snack wrappers everywhere This sounds like a good example of not enjoying nature properly.
  - subpixel 4y ago
    Many trails are, in fact, private. Land trusts and similar organizations often maintain the trails on private land, for private landowners, and are charged with both protecting the land and _managing access_. A very common occurrence is for miles of trail system to be accessible by less than a dozen parking spots. This is not convenient; and that is on purpose. Another common thing where I live are preserves that are only accessible via paddle, and only via membership in the organization (often a land trust, sometimes another kinds of nonprofit) that stewards the land, and sometimes only if you are lucky enough to "win" a reservation. (That process used to be by mail, like Grateful Dead tickets; now it is a single morning when everyone wakes up at 6 and tries to snag a reservation online.) There is simply no way to allow mass access and maintain the circumstances that make these locations special and worth preserving. In the US, the most popular state parks (where wild landscapes are ruined, wild animals molested, and deadlocked vehicle traffic are the norm) are an example of how attempts to do so fail.
lisp-pornstar 4y ago
That's not selfish, GRs are sometimes crossing natural park in which nature and wilderness related laws are enforced, there are people that can sue you if you smoke a cigarette/walk in certain areas/throw some trash at the ground/camp in les calanques de marseille for example (the south of france is highly inflammable during summer). In order to maintain the local biodiversity, keep a minor impact of the local wilderness of these places (endangered species often), some money has to be raised, experts have to be paid to help decisions (should a trail be modified for X reasons related to what I said supra, should some trees be cut down for security reasons, should some security lanes be created to prevent fires etc...), which then requires the intervention of professionals to apply these decisions. You also have to pay "rangers" sometimes (I don't know of many parks of france, i'm mainly talking about calanques and cevennes). When I go climbing I have to buy a local guide documenting all the historical climbing spots; the persons that sells the guide are the one that equipped and maintened these historical routes : is it selfishness ?
- dantheman 4y ago
  Just charge admission/sell a permit
  - lisp-pornstar 4y ago
    How ?
    - jpollock 4y ago
      The same way you force them to buy a map. Unless "I have to buy" is a mistranslation.
      - lisp-pornstar 4y ago
        You don't have to buy a map, paths begins usually in villages or lead to them. Usually when I walk in an unknown place I can find some of the red signs that indicates a GR, sometimes with distances and names of places they lead to. I hiked a lot without a map, never struggled to find a GR, local people usually know about them very well.
timwaagh 4y ago
Whoever has time for this sort of thing probably has money to pay them.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
[dead]
insane_dreamer 4y ago
Someone made the effort to string together the info on all the connecting trails and figure out where to bivouac, etc., and started a non-profit association to continue the effort, so they're charging. How is that selfish? If you're that intent on hiking the trail without paying then go ahead and figure it out on your own.

namdnay 4y ago

I wouldn’t say selfish, just stuck in the past. The money they collect from selling official guidebooks pays for the maintenance of the trails

cma 4y ago
Seems absurd until you look at how America is handling it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33835815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33835815
swalling 4y ago
France specifically seems to have a bizarre tolerance for "pay to play" culture and limited access in outdoor recreation. Countries all around them have shown how strong freedom to roam laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam) can work. Those just don't exist in France. Even in the US, trails are largely maintained by volunteers, non-profits, and federal institutions.
- idoubtit 4y ago
  > France specifically seems to have a bizarre tolerance for "pay to play" culture and limited access in outdoor recreation. Countries all around them have shown how strong freedom to roam laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam) can work. Source? Because that Wikipedia page does not state that: no word about France, Italy and Spain, and just a little "freedom to roam" in UK and Germany. In France, you can enter any open landscape and bivouac there, unless the owner directly states you cannot. The law also forbids to build anything too near to the sea, breaking access to the coast. Private beaches are forbidden. Isn't that more than in most neighbouring countries? > Even in the US, our trails are largely maintained by volunteers, non-profits, and federal institutions. It's the same in France: mostly unpaid helpers from associations and paid workers from municipalities.
  - squidgyhead 4y ago
    Right of passage laws are not part of the code civile, which is the legal system in France. Quebec follows this as well - a hiking/climbing had access removed because someone was thinking of building something. In common law countries areas, the fact that there is a well-used trail that has existed for some time means that people get to pass, regardless of whether it's private property or not. In code-civile jurisdictions, the government steps in and buys part of the land to allow for access.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- julienb_sea 4y ago
  This is completely at odds with the French GR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GR_footpath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GR_footpath) trail. There are legal mandates to require public access to all coastline country wide and they are aggressively enforced. Nothing comparable exists in the US or most countries.
  - swalling 4y ago
    There are more miles of coastline with legally mandated public access in the US than in France. It’s simply handled at the state level not the federal. https://beachapedia.org/Beach_Access https://beachapedia.org/Beach_Access
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      > There are more miles of coastline with legally mandated public access in the US than in France. This sentence is silly. France is smaller than Texas.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > There are more miles of coastline with legally mandated public access in the US than in France. France has 2,000 miles of total coastline (before considering access); Alaska alone has over 6,600. A more sane comparison would be share of coastline with public access, or maybe for some purposes per-capita public access coastline. But absolute miles of public access coastline is silly.
      - swalling 4y ago
        If you include Alaska, ~75% of the US coastline has meaningful public access protections. If you don't include Alaska, because people don't sunbathe topless there or whatever, it's like ~20% based on my napkin math? The original comment was "Nothing comparable exists in the US". Given that the entire West Coast and other key beach recreation states like North Carolina and Hawaii have stellar laws on public access, the root comment was simply not true.
- namdnay 4y ago
  The French hiking federation is a nonprofit, and the vast majority of members are volunteers. But you still have costs, maintaining these routes costs money They’re not charging toll. They’ve got an outdated funding model based on selling maps, and they’re sticking their head in the sand. But what are the other options? Go to the taxpayer? Put up advertising billboards on the trails?
  - swalling 4y ago
    Yes, you use taxpayer funds and volunteer trail crews. Having done trail volunteer maintenance myself on the PCT, I can tell you it works just fine. There are also low cost permits for thru hikers and trailhead parking, which offset some of the cost without creating nasty externalities like getting people lost (which is what happens when you charge for maps).
lisp-pornstar 4y ago
How is this "stuck in the past" ? Is the future about building some gates and selling some pass ? You can totally find the GR and walk through it without a map.
- namdnay 4y ago
  In the past if you wanted to do a GR you would need to buy one of their maps. There’s no way you’re going to plan a 2-week hike without a map Now that’s challenged by the internet
  - lisp-pornstar 4y ago
    What past do you refer to ? GRs exist since 1947. Trails didn't change a lot since then, the principle stayed the same : Red and white signs to mark the path, and "recuperation" of historical paths, made by the circulation of persons (think about Le Saint Jacques de Compostelle, which is the historical path of the pilgrims). It never was "extreme" or "dangerous" to follow a trail without a map in france, you would go through a lot of villages where you could get some water, buy some food, ask for directions and etc... Very logically, if I were to plan a 2 week hike without a map in the past, I would go to a village that's on a GR path, walk one week and then go back. I never felt unconscious or in danger, I had no cellphone and no map
    - namdnay 4y ago
      Believe me, hiking the alpine GRs without a map is asking for trouble. The trails are very well maintained but you need to plan your days, you don’t want to be tired out at 4pm in the middle of a very rocky portion. And if you were to hit fog or heavy rain, a map can be a lifesaver. I’m pretty sure that until the 21st century, nearly everyone doing the gr5 for example would have bought a map
      - lisp-pornstar 4y ago
        Well, you picked up one of the most difficult GR, situated in one of the most lethal landscape, with one of the worst weather, of france. That's not the fairest example, because that's not representative of the relative triviality of most of GRs. (Even "difficult" ones seems trivial compared to GR5.

subpixel 4y ago

What's not fun at all is when every pretty place is a GPS coordinate and then swarmed by people who only want to take a picture of themselves and have little regard for nature. It's very common near where I live for the agencies who manage trails and other unique spots to opt-out of GPS-enabled maps (like Avenza) and to actively monitor social media to ask that people refrain from naming 'photo opp' locations.

subroutine 4y ago
Why have the trails at all then? This sounds like some gatekeeping bullshit, where you think people who take a few pix along the trail are not enjoying nature correctly. They don't "respect nature".
- strken 4y ago
  The gatekeeping happens because less experienced people who drive to a spot are more likely to leave used toilet paper and discarded snack wrappers everywhere, not because they're "not enjoying nature properly".
  - plugin-baby 4y ago
    > leave used toilet paper and discarded snack wrappers everywhere This sounds like a good example of not enjoying nature properly.
- subpixel 4y ago
  Many trails are, in fact, private. Land trusts and similar organizations often maintain the trails on private land, for private landowners, and are charged with both protecting the land and _managing access_. A very common occurrence is for miles of trail system to be accessible by less than a dozen parking spots. This is not convenient; and that is on purpose. Another common thing where I live are preserves that are only accessible via paddle, and only via membership in the organization (often a land trust, sometimes another kinds of nonprofit) that stewards the land, and sometimes only if you are lucky enough to "win" a reservation. (That process used to be by mail, like Grateful Dead tickets; now it is a single morning when everyone wakes up at 6 and tries to snag a reservation online.) There is simply no way to allow mass access and maintain the circumstances that make these locations special and worth preserving. In the US, the most popular state parks (where wild landscapes are ruined, wild animals molested, and deadlocked vehicle traffic are the norm) are an example of how attempts to do so fail.

lisp-pornstar 4y ago

That's not selfish, GRs are sometimes crossing natural park in which nature and wilderness related laws are enforced, there are people that can sue you if you smoke a cigarette/walk in certain areas/throw some trash at the ground/camp in les calanques de marseille for example (the south of france is highly inflammable during summer). In order to maintain the local biodiversity, keep a minor impact of the local wilderness of these places (endangered species often), some money has to be raised, experts have to be paid to help decisions (should a trail be modified for X reasons related to what I said supra, should some trees be cut down for security reasons, should some security lanes be created to prevent fires etc...), which then requires the intervention of professionals to apply these decisions. You also have to pay "rangers" sometimes (I don't know of many parks of france, i'm mainly talking about calanques and cevennes). When I go climbing I have to buy a local guide documenting all the historical climbing spots; the persons that sells the guide are the one that equipped and maintened these historical routes : is it selfishness ?

dantheman 4y ago
Just charge admission/sell a permit
- lisp-pornstar 4y ago
  How ?
  - jpollock 4y ago
    The same way you force them to buy a map. Unless "I have to buy" is a mistranslation.
    - lisp-pornstar 4y ago
      You don't have to buy a map, paths begins usually in villages or lead to them. Usually when I walk in an unknown place I can find some of the red signs that indicates a GR, sometimes with distances and names of places they lead to. I hiked a lot without a map, never struggled to find a GR, local people usually know about them very well.

timwaagh 4y ago

Whoever has time for this sort of thing probably has money to pay them.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

[dead]

insane_dreamer 4y ago

Someone made the effort to string together the info on all the connecting trails and figure out where to bivouac, etc., and started a non-profit association to continue the effort, so they're charging. How is that selfish? If you're that intent on hiking the trail without paying then go ahead and figure it out on your own.