I am no expert on the subject but from what I see in my part of California things can get very confusing.
Take, for example, the toll roads in my area. They are, I believe, owned by a toll road authority which is a governmental entity specifically created to finance, build and manage the toll roads in the county. But the toll road authority contracts to the state department of transportation (CalTrans) to perform maintenance operations. While CalTrans crews will do minor maintenance (repair potholes, guard rails, signs) anything major is bid out by CalTrans to private contractors. For what it is worth, the toll roads are marked with state highway signs and numbers which might lead you to think the road belongs to the state. So who do you report a maintenance problem to? I think CalTrans but am not sure. And who is the operator? The toll road authority collects the tolls. For a private business the entity that collects admission fees is likely the operator of the venue. Using that analogy, the toll road authority is the operator. Or is CalTrans, the entity that maintains the road, the operator? Greg mentions that in his part of the US the government doesn’t own the land along the highway. I don’t believe that is true for most of the US. The “right of way” includes a lot more land than just where the pavement is located. It includes all land that had to be modified to put the road in (side drainage ditches, cuts, fills, etc.). For a rural two lane road the pavement is likely only 24 feet wide while the right of way is likely to be around 100 feet wide. In rural areas there is often a barbed wire fence running along the boundary of the right of way making it pretty obvious how wide it is. —Tod > On Apr 13, 2023, at 4:03 AM, Jens Glad Balchen via Tagging > <tagging@openstreetmap.org> wrote: > > Hi Greg. > > Those are valid concerns. > > I don't know how this works in other countries. The way it works here is that > the road owner contracts someone to do stuff, that is, to actually go out and > put down asphalt, cut vegetation, sweep debris, clear snow, fix signage, etc. > The road owner can split these contracts between different contractors. To > ensure some level of continuity and consistency, the road owner is still the > single point of contact for the public. The public doesn't know and doesn't > care who the contractors are. > > So in this sense, you could say if the county owns a road, the county is in > principle both the owner and the operator, and as the operator the county has > contracted operational tasks to someone else. In this case we can safely > assume that the owner and operator are the same entity. This wasn't > historically true in Norway -- there was a ten-year period during which the > counties owned the roads, but the state's road authority was the operator of > those roads. This was in contrast to municipal roads, where the municipality > was always both owner and operator. > > If we look at this from a data perspective, the most important information > for us to capture today is which public entity type owns the road and put > this in the ownership tag. The specific entity can be derived geographically > with probably 100% accuracy. If we have the specific entity available in a > data set, we can put this in the owner tag. If the operator at some point in > the future again diverges from the owner (like with the county roads), we can > put that in operator. > > Sound good? > > Jens > > On 13.04.2023 12:42, Greg Troxel wrote: >> Jens Glad Balchen via Tagging <tagging@openstreetmap.org> >> <mailto:tagging@openstreetmap.org> writes: >> >>> That does seem to capture it when used on roads. I see it's mostly >>> used for private roads. Is this tag use undisputed if used with >>> national/state/county/municipal? E.g. do people object to it being >>> redudant? >> You said you didn't like operator, and I suggest stepping back and >> considering the world and multiple possible data consumers, not just the >> ones currently on the table. >> >> operator= as I understand it should name the entity that is performing >> whatever operations make sense for the object. For a road, that's road >> maintenance, snowplowing, debris removal. operator should in my view >> actually name an entity, not say "county". >> >> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:owner >> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:owner> seems to be what you are >> looking for, to denote ownership. >> >> There seems to be an underlying assumption that the owner is the >> operator. That's likely often true. But if you want to report issues, >> that should go to the operator, not the owner. >> >> >> You also seem to be looking for "national/state" type key which would >> not contain the actual owner, but instead need processing by finding an >> admin boundary and then a lookup table. I'm not sure what's best but I >> think we should realize that we are talking about denormalization of the >> db vs not and that both approaches have issues. >> >> >> In my part of the US, the situation is: >> >> For most roads, the land is not actually owned by the government (even >> though almost nobody understands this). For some I'm sure it is. >> >> Usually there is an easement for the road. >> >> The government would own the pavement placed on the land :-) >> >> operation/maintenance would be done by a state, county, or >> municipality (admin_level 4/6/8, normally). >> >> In Massachusetts, Interstate highways are maintained by the state >> government, specifically the agency "MassDOT". >> >> Most local roads are maintained by cities/towns. >> >> Some roads are designated and signed "state highway" and are >> maintained by MassDOT. Some "numbered state highway" are also "state >> highway" and MaasDOT-maintained and some are not so designated, and >> thus maintained by the Town. Actually it is section by section. Many >> people are unclear on this. >> >> There are "private ways" that are much like "public ways" execpt that >> sometimes the town maintains them and sometimes the town does not. A >> town might do snow removal and debris removal but not pavement >> maintenance on a particular one. >> >> There are places you can drive which are not even private ways, such >> as service roads at shopping centers, and residential driveways. >> These are maintained by the property owners. >> >> >> >> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
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