
Fixing Ellis Island's borders in the face of incorrect government data - JasonHarrison
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/IsStatenIsland/diary/392994
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supernova87a
I'll just mention a side story for people's interest. You may notice that
Ellis Island is connected to New Jersey by a small bridge, in the maps and
satellite view.

That bridge is a service bridge, but it isn't implausible that it could be
adapted for use by pedestrians to visit Ellis Island. It might involve a few
$m and an environmental review, but it has been considered before.

However, despite periodic questioning and advocacy for it to be allowed for
pedestrians (to decrease the cost of people visiting, and make the island more
accessible), the NPS has stated that "an approach by boat is important to the
experience". A $19.25 ticket, run by a private ferry company.

Go figure.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
First question: who runs the local National Parks Service (NPS), and who runs
the the ferry company, and what's their [financial] link.

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exegete
The ferry companies and NYC lobbied to make access by ferry only. There are
two locations to board the ferry. One in Jersey and one in NYC. Ferry
companies obviously didn’t want to lose revenue and NYC didn’t want people to
go to Jersey.

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ThePadawan
There really are some weird edge cases out there.

E.g. parts of the border between Switzerland and Italy is described by peaks
and valleys of the alps. Now due to climate change, glaciers are melting, and
suddenly parts of Switzerland and Italy are swapping.
[[https://www.nzz.ch/panorama/neue-landesgrenze-schweiz-und-
it...](https://www.nzz.ch/panorama/neue-landesgrenze-schweiz-und-italien-
streiten-im-hochgebirge-ld.1546141), German only]

~~~
Stratoscope
That's an interesting article, and Google Translate does a fine job on the
English translation.

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RyJones
this is amazing - I'm a map geek and this stuff is catnip for me.

I built a, for the time, very good data logging setup for my Jeep and mapped
some trails[0] in 2001. Why? The maps provided by the USFS and the timber
leaseholders were (and still are) wrong.

I also made a point the first time I was in Europe of renting a car and
driving to Baarle-Hertog[1] and walking to all of the enclaves, as well as
enclaves within enclaves.

[0]:
[https://github.com/ryjones/Area29SnowmobileTrailMap](https://github.com/ryjones/Area29SnowmobileTrailMap)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-
Hertog#List_of_enclaves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-
Hertog#List_of_enclaves)

~~~
lscotte
I do search and rescue, and it is amazing how out of date the USFS maps are.
The "2016" revision shows roads that haven`t existed in decades. Even the MVUM
map is wrong in similar ways, and it`s supposed to be the source of truth.

~~~
ghaff
In general, especially in the western US as I'm sure you know, it's hard to
rely on maps to tell you how drive-able very secondary roads are. They can
range from being pretty decent for even just a passenger car and mostly just
normal driving skills to you'd better have a Jeep and know how to drive it to
"Nah. This isn't really a road." With the weather/season/when was the last
flash flood entering into the equation as well.

There are some very sad stories related to people assuming that a road on a
map is actually a road in the way people living around cities generally think
of the term.

~~~
lostapathy
It's too bad there isn't a good way to crowd-source this data and get it back
upstream to official maps.

I took a drive on what started as a very nice, scenic forest service road in
Colorado and ended up in the back of an active cinder mine. We got through the
mine ok, but never would have been able to make it back up the mountain the
way we came down. I spent the whole time worrying we were going to get stuck
behind a locked fence until the workers came back Monday morning.

~~~
maxerickson
It won't magically take care of upstreaming the data, but you could mark it on
OpenStreetMap. access=private in the mine at least.

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Hokusai
Who owns the Statue of Liberty (great video by CGP Grey):
[https://youtu.be/SgZ1f4ACZBQ](https://youtu.be/SgZ1f4ACZBQ)

~~~
pchristensen
You beat me to it!

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aj7
Now do Governor’s Island.

