Please don't take the following as me arguing with you. I'm just trying to understand.
No problem - it's a useful discussion and a hard question. I think the bottom line is that one has to understand the actual legal/use distinctions made by the experts, and then figure out how much of that to represent and how in the map. Neither of us knows that. I am tempted to go ask the police, but I bet they don't know, because it's never the edge case that matters to them. I once got a ticket for an expired registration while parked in a private driveway. I wound up getting out of the ticket on some other technicality, though, so I don't know whether or not the ticket was legit. Hmm. in my town (mass) there was a guy with 10 unregistered cars in his driveway. He got hassled under zoning which prohibited storage of more than 1 unregistered car. But the police did not care because they were not on a (public|private) way, so it was not an unregistered vehicle offense. I could use that as a distinction, but then roads through apartment complexes would be tagged as driveways? See http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Belmere+Pkwy,+Tampa,+FL+33624&sll=28.0725,-82.548614&sspn=0.009202,0.013862&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Belmere+Pkwy,+Tampa,+Hillsborough,+Florida+33624&ll=28.083633,-82.532698&spn=0.0046,0.006931&t=h&z=17 (apartment complex, hence one owner and no individual frontage, hence all one parcel - should Belmere Pkwy be highway=service, service=driveway?) Well, that's how I would tend to see it, but it being in practice street like and large and having a name makes it feel like it's fair to label it as if it were a private way. I wonder if it really is a private way and the parcel data is out of date. > I don't understand if a person has a right of access to private ways > like they do with public ways. But it's definitely much more reasonable > to just go on one than to go on someone's house lot. Not where I live. Where I live (and both states where I used to live, and I suspect in most of the US), if there's a legally installed fence/gate (or "no trespassing" sign), and you bypass it, you're trespassing, whether it's a "private way" through a gated community or a private driveway going to someone's house. And if there aren't any such "no trespassing" signs or gates/fences, you're not trespassing - after all it's not trespassing to walk up to someone's house and ring their doorbell, or to drive down a shared driveway (think a long narrow shared driveway on a flag lot) to deliver a package. Here it's the same. Actually 'trespassing' is 'being on the land of another without permission', and it's not illegal. The offense is 'trespass after notice' and that fits 100% with the signs and norms you describe (with the minor definitional change). In mass, private ways look like public streets, and I have never seen a "no trespassing" sign on one. Sometimes you can't tell they are a private way (vs public way) unless you go look at town records. Sometimes there is a small 'private way' notation on the sign. I suspect it would be improper to put up a no trespassing sign on such a road. On a driveway (in a gated community, on a person's house), no trespassing signs are not at all odd.
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