[Talk-us] access=private on driveways (was: Deleting tiger:reviewed=no/addr:street for routes)

[Kevin Kenny]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 1:52 PM Jmapb <jmapb at gmx.com> wrote:
> I'm also in the "worry about it" camp.
>
> To me, it's sad to see a mapper go to all the trouble of fixing the routing to the house https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/263869602 by drawing in the driveway https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/791633657 and then snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by tagging the driveway private. Yes, a large company like Amazon (who paid for this driveway to be mapped, so we might presume it's mapped to their specifications) can implement their own router and treat the access=private tags more loosely, but that's no reason for them to be breaking routing for everyone else.
>
> In short, I think that driveways and other service roads should ONLY be tagged access=private based on specific knowledge of a restriction. And if the access restriction is not verifiable by survey, it's good to add a access:source=* or note=* so mappers like me won't assume the tag is outdated or erroneous.
>
> And Kevin, relevant for hikers like you & me is the question of service roads that lead to private enclaves within public lands. Often these roads are public access up to a certain point, and having that information correctly mapped is quite helpful. Many of these are imported from TIGER with access=private the whole way, and reclaiming as much of these as possible is certainly on my to-do list.

I'll confess to having perpetrated a fair number - at a time when I
didn't know better.

A few things, though:

The immediate curtilage of a house is presumed to be private; at least
in the US, one does not drive or walk directly up to someone's house
without having business there. (Someone making a delivery, obviously,
has business there.)

I ordinarily will NOT hike on a service way or track across
privately-owned land unless I see some indication that it is open, or
I know what the situation is in advance. Of course, there are
exceptions: for instance, I know of some woods roads that are public
rights-of-way, dating to a time before the automobile, where
landowners have attempted to close them.  The local hiking club
advises to hike them, openly and notoriously, disregarding the
posters.  (In at least one case that I'm aware of, the landowner
eventually changed the posters to read, "PUBLIC RIGHT-OF-WAY ON
PRIVATE LAND. STAY ON TRAIL")
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/291410854 is a public highway,
whatever the posters say! But most of the roads that have signs like
'Johnson Lane // PRIVATE'  are just farm driveways that I ordinarily
wouldn't hike.

I surely don't mark as `acccess=private` the service roads going to
inholdings on public land, whoever maintains them.  The last one I can
recall mapping was https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/20631036 - and I
marked it as `motor_vechicle=private` (it's signed 'no motor
vehicles'), `foot=designated bicycle=no wheelchair=no atv=no ski=yes
snowmobile=yes` and I left out `horse` because I have Absolutely No
Idea, except for the fact that the trail was free of horse
by-products. (Whether to use 'track', 'service' or 'residential' for
that way is controversial and in the end is also meaningless.  It's
there mostly for forestry. Someone happens to have a cabin on it. In
the field, it's a pair of ruts winding off into the woods.)

I haven't had any trouble getting OSMand to navigate to a house on a
road marked `access=private`. It pops up a warning that my destination
is on a private road, and asks whether it's OK to route over it - and
then does so happily.  (Much more happily than before I tweaked
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/165370475 to restore network
connectivity. When I was driving on it, it wound up scolding me, "You
have been driving off road for the last 1.5 miles. Please proceed to
the highlighted route!") It's not just whatever custom system Amazon
uses. I'm perfectly willing to believe that overzealous application of
'private' breaks _some_ routing engines, but 'breaks routing for
everyone' is a bit hyperbolic.

-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin