OSM Overpass Hiking Trail Route Scraper

Query the Overpass API for OpenStreetMap hiking route relations by bounding box or region name. Returns ODbL-licensed trail geometry, route metadata, and full OSM tags — the only license-clean trail corpus on Apify, safe for AI training and GIS use.

---

What it does

The actor sends Overpass QL queries against the public overpass-api.de endpoint (or a mirror of your choice) to retrieve relation elements with route=hiking or route=foot tags within the specified geographic area. For each relation it returns:

• Route name, type, and network level (international / national / regional / local)
• Operator and start/end node names
• Distance in kilometres (from OSM distance or length tags)
• OSMC waymark symbol
• Bounding box coordinates
• Pipe-separated member way IDs as a geometry proxy
• Full OSM tag map as a JSON string
• Wikidata / Wikipedia cross-references

All data is released by OpenStreetMap contributors under the Open Database Licence (ODbL). You are free to use it for AI training, GIS pipelines, or commercial products — attribution required.

---

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
Max Items	integer	100	Maximum route relations to return across all queries
Bounding Boxes	array	["35.5,136.5,36.2,137.5"]	One or more south,west,north,east decimal-degree strings
Region Names	array	[]	Place names resolved to bounding boxes via Nominatim. Used when Bounding Boxes is empty. Example: "Tyrol, Austria"
Route Types	array	["hiking","foot"]	OSM route tag values to include
Network Filter	array	[]	Restrict to specific network levels: iwn (international), nwn (national), rwn (regional), lwn (local). Empty = all levels
Mirror Endpoint	string	—	Alternative Overpass API URL, e.g. https://overpass.kumi.systems/api/interpreter

Example inputs

Fetch all hiking routes in a Japanese alpine area:

{
  "maxItems": 50,
  "bboxList": ["35.5,136.5,36.2,137.5"],
  "routeTypes": ["hiking", "foot"]
}

Fetch only international and national routes in the Swiss Alps:

{
  "maxItems": 20,
  "bboxList": ["46.0,7.0,47.0,8.5"],
  "routeTypes": ["hiking"],
  "networkFilter": ["iwn", "nwn"]
}

Resolve a region by name:

{
  "maxItems": 30,
  "regionNames": ["Tyrol, Austria"],
  "routeTypes": ["hiking"]
}

---

Output

Each result is a flat object. Numeric fields (distance_km, bbox_*) are numbers; all others are strings. Missing fields are omitted.

Field	Description
osm_id	OSM relation numeric ID
osm_type	relation or way
route_name	Human-readable name from the name tag
route_type	hiking or foot
network	Network level: iwn, nwn, rwn, lwn, or empty
operator	Operator/maintainer of the route
distance_km	Route distance in kilometres
osmc_symbol	OSMC waymark symbol string
from_node	Start location name
to_node	End location name
geometry	Pipe-separated member way OSM IDs
bbox_south / bbox_west / bbox_north / bbox_east	Element bounding box
tags	Full OSM tag map as a JSON string
wikidata	Wikidata entity QID
wikipedia	Wikipedia article reference
source_bbox	The query bbox that returned this element

Example result

{
  "osm_id": 12345678,
  "osm_type": "relation",
  "route_name": "Nakasendo Trail",
  "route_type": "hiking",
  "network": "nwn",
  "distance_km": 42.5,
  "from_node": "Magome",
  "to_node": "Narai",
  "bbox_south": 35.57,
  "bbox_west": 137.49,
  "bbox_north": 35.98,
  "bbox_east": 137.88,
  "tags": "{\"route\":\"hiking\",\"network\":\"nwn\",\"name\":\"Nakasendo Trail\"}",
  "source_bbox": "35.5,136.5,36.2,137.5"
}

---

Rate limits and mirrors

The public overpass-api.de server enforces a concurrent-query limit. For bulk collection across many bounding boxes, use the Mirror Endpoint input to point at a less-loaded server:

• https://overpass.kumi.systems/api/interpreter
• https://maps.mail.ru/osm/tools/overpass/api/interpreter
• https://overpass.openstreetmap.ru/api/interpreter

The actor inserts an 800 ms delay between successive bbox queries to respect server etiquette.

---

License

Route data is copyright OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence. Attribution is required for any derived work.