I am always coming across private roads, which are physically there but not rights of way, and occasionally footpaths which are rights of way but not physically passable! I am surprised that a schema for representing this hasn't been developed already.
I have seen access=private suggested for the former case. Although often there are privately roads which are still accessible to the public, for example the track past some playing fields to a sports pavilion, or the pavement of London's South Bank which is privately owned but a public space. If you wanted to be fully general you would have a table of flags, for example a bridle path: Physical Designation Foot yes yes Bicycle yes yes Horse yes yes Motorcar yes no I think this is going too far. I would be happy with designation=footpath, designation=bridle_path, and designation=byway to mark ways which look unpaved physically but are rights of way, and access=private to mark those which look inviting but are in practice unusable by the public. The in-between cases of a privately owned space which is open to the public (like the South Bank) and a road which is not public but not completely forbidden either (like a drive leading to a country hotel) I would be happy to leave untagged. There are also some where you're not quite sure if they are private or not, like a track between two houses leading to a shared garage area. I tend to map these as highway=track, which fairly represents the physical condition of the road and also gives a hint to the map reader that they might be semi-private. I don't feel a burning need for a tag to represent this, especially as IANAL and I don't know exactly what the access rights are. -- Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com> _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk