[Talk-GB] Private roads that are private for maintenance but are publicly accessible

[Gregory]

On 26 May 2010 13:33, Ian Spencer <ianmspencer at gmail.com> wrote:

> The interesting thing is that the one thing that it is not is
> access=permissive - the owners have lost their right to a private way
> because over many years they have not sought to enforce or restrict that
> right of way, yet they have not given permission. However, it is in
> limbo in that no definitive way is defined for the road. In reality it
> is simply an unadopted road going back say 100 years.
>
> Having read around a bit more, I believe the legal position is that it
> can still be a public highway even though it is unadopted, so I would
> say that the access=private flag should be sparingly used only for those
> private roads and paths that display notices to that effect.
>
> So the challenge for the mapper is when is a private road an unadopted
> public highway and when is it a truly private access?
>
> So you mean these places that like to display "private" signs, even though
legally they probably aren't?
I just map them as access=private based on the sign and if someone
challenges it so they pull down the sign then they can also update OSM. If
it is just a road that has a bad surface (not maintained/adopted by the
local authorities) with no "private" sign then I don't use the access tag, I
maybe tag it highway=service/track, I suppose I could use the smooth=* tag
if I ever wanted to.

-- 
Gregory
osm at livingwithdragons.com
http://www.livingwithdragons.com
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