Title: Pontatoc Canyon Trail Underpass
Description: Underpass for the Urban Assault trail in Pontatoc Canyon
Message to Reviewers
This underpass for the Urban Assault trail serves hikers and mountain bikers. It also serves to divides the northern and southern portions of this scenic desert hiking trail.
Thanks for the appeal, Explorer! The object in question does not meet the Wayfarer criteria as it is a common underpass with no significance. We recommend you review the Wayspot Criteria before submitting your next Wayspot contribution: Wayfarer — Niantic Technical Support and Help Center
So my issue is I really don’t understand the reasoning from Niantic support. They say it “has no significance” but nothing in the help articles mentions “significance”. In my mind this falls under the same category as footbridges and trail markers along hiking trails and should be an easy “Yes” vote since it aids in exercise/exploration along a public hiking trail. Can someone help me understand what I am missing?
One reason it might have been rejected is that those do not look like tunnels meant for people to use. It seems like the title and description are not accurate.
The corrugated steel pipe is clearly for stormwater drainage under the road. If the drains were supposed to be used by pedestrians, one would expect a sign of some sort directing people there.
This is what I was thinking as well. It doesn’t even seem to look tall enough for a person to stand in comfortably, so I very much doubt it’s intended to be used as an underpass, especially when the road it runs under looks to be very quiet and easy enough to cross with no assistance necessary.
My town uses these corrugated pipes as tunnels in some places as well, and they are very hard to get accepted. Even when a paved trail clearly leads through it.
This tunnel is meant for pedestrians, if you look at the trail in Google maps or OSM they direct you to walk through this tunnel. Niantic’s own game shows it as the path you should take while on the trail.
Can’t see it in either of those maps. Sure the line goes to the street, but there isn’t anything saying walk through the drain pipe. Do you have any explicit evidence? That would help your case.
It pretty clearly goes under the road in my eyes. Regardless you are looking at the crossing point in my submission. No reasonable person would think you are supposed to scramble up to the road rather than walk or bike through the tunnel.
Here is another trails site which explicitly says that the tunnel is part of the trail.
I assume they built it like that as it was easier to add an extra corrugated metal tunnel since they put the others for emergency drainage.
As to the point of it being unsafe, this area hasn’t flooded in years. For the hiking trail to be flooded you would need a once every 20 years rainfall. That is a very abnormal state and Niantic has built in mechanisms of warning against inclement weather.
This, too. Just because the game can issue weather alerts doesn’t mean we can approve locations that may be safe. That said, I disagree with the original context about the location being ineligible because it’s unsafe.
Anyway, my take on this. There’s a bit of an exchange going on, and I think it does need to be clear that this IS a trail or at least used as a trail. Looking at it, the tire tracks are pretty clear so at least somebody is biking on it. It’s probably a trail that a local group of riders mapped out to take advantage of the nice undeveloped space for off-road biking - I’d love to ride that trail on my mountain bike, myself. But it isn’t trail infrastructure installed to facilitate exploration or exercise (the only reason this could be eligible), it was installed when the road was paved to make sure flooding doesn’t occur that washes out the road. The use of it for biking is just a fortune byproduct.
I bicycle a lot. I love and have submitted a lot of footbridges and pedestrian tunnels. I see your point and can even get behind this and would even think of it as a sort of obstacle for biking, but I personally don’t think it’s an eligible candidate.
