[OSM-newbies] Marking Public_Footpaths on Farm Access Tracks

[James Ewen]

This concept of public right of ways on private lands has always been
a bit weird for me. Obviously the concept in the UK is much different
than in North America. The UK concept is obviously based on the fact
that many of these public footpaths have been in use much longer than
the concept of land ownership and subdivision, whereas in North
America, the road network was surveyed and laid out with private lands
in the adjoining spaces.

So, the access=private tag is more or less designating that the land
is owned by an individual, not a level of government, and the
designation=public_footpath designates that the public has been
granted access for foot traffic only.

Here in North America, access=private would designate that no one is
able to access the area without approval from the land owner,  and all
of the footpaths, roadways, etc are all owned by the various levels of
government.

There is an interesting twist to this where some roadways are now
being built under what is known as a public-private partnership (P3).
This means that the land is owned by the government, but a private
company builds and maintains the roadway. So, would one tag the road
as private, but then add tags to indicate that vehicles are allowed on
the roadway?

There are a lot of access roads in the foothills of Alberta that are
built owned and maintained by various companies. Forestry as well as
Oil and Gas companies are the main owners of these roads. Many of them
are signed as private roads, and use by the public is at their own
peril. Commercial users other than the road owner must obtain
permission before using the road. In addition, many of these private
roads require commercial users to have radios with specific
frequencies available in order to maintain communication on the road,
so that heavy truck traffic can be aware of other users travelling the
roads. So what the heck do you do with that? Obviously it would be
very useful to have all that information available on a map.

Being able to determine the owner of the road, and the frequency used
on the road of high importance for commercial users, so maps showing
that information would be very useful. To be able to create those
maps, there would need to be appropriate tags.

Would you do something like this:

highway=tertiary
access=private
designation=public_roadway
name=Willow Creek Road
commercial_use=permissive
radio_frequency=163.150
owner=Weyerhauser Canada

Here's an online map of an area where this type of mapping detail
would be appropriate.

http://roaduse.theforestrycorp.com/i/RoadUse/js/public_docs/HWP_Access_June_18_2009.pdf

-- 
James
VE6SRV