I’ve noticed recently that a lot of the GPS traces in my area are doing weird things. Many of the traces are fine, but a good portion of them are what can only be described as ‘dashed’. I thought it might not be just mine, so I checked other areas of the world, and it’s happening other places too.

Here’s a sample from my region. Most of those traces are my own, but some are dashed and others are smooth. I think that the dashed ones are more recent.

What’s also perplexing is that I can download the trace from OSM, and it displays all the detail that there should be.

Does anyone know what’s going on?

EDIT: I looked back over my traces, and everything back to about July 26 is fine, but prior to that for a couple months is all funky.

At this location there is a line (that extends into Bellefonte) that marks an abandoned railway. This is only accurate in the sense that there was once a railway here, but there isn’t any trace of it other than the grade. Some of the grade has been appropriated into a cycle path. Some is now a road. But as far as I am aware, there is no point along this path where there is evidence of a railway.

As this feature cuts through various other (current) features, I think it should probably be removed and relegated to history. It’s essentially clutter at this point. If there were still tracks on the ground, then the tag would be appropriate, but it’s really just a path now (and not even half of it is that).

Thoughts?