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Fixing Ellis Island's borders in the face of incorrect government data

101 points| JasonHarrison | 5 years ago |openstreetmap.org

21 comments

order

supernova87a|5 years ago

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|5 years ago

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

JumpCrisscross|5 years ago

The ownership of Ellis and Liberty Islands, between New York, New Jersey and the federal government, has been the subject of multiple skirmishes, treaties and Supreme Court cases.

AlexTrask|5 years ago

On osm you can mark the kind of acces so you can indicate that is a service acces

ThePadawan|5 years ago

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..., German only]

Stratoscope|5 years ago

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

RyJones|5 years ago

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

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

pocket_titan|5 years ago

I live somewhat near Baarle-Hertog. Normally, there's no real issues with the enclaves, since both Belgium and the Netherlands are in the EU. But the coronavirus has caused national policy to differ, with the funniest example being: shops in Belgium were (some have since been allowed to reopene) forced to close, but the ones in the Netherlands weren't, leading to bizarre situations where shops that crossed over the border (sometimes multiple times) had to 'close' the parts located in Belgium, but not the one in the Netherlands. So you would not be able to buy things located in the 'Belgian area'. Crazy, but cool!

lscotte|5 years ago

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.

aj7|5 years ago

Now do Governor’s Island.