A way to deal with private roads

I am finding I am coming across an abundant amount of “Private Roads” that can be walked/ran but we don’t get credit for them. Many times I cannot determine whether a street can be run until I am actually on the run and see what I’m up against. The road could be gated, posted, or both. It may be a neighborhood that is privately maintained but has no indications that walking/running that street is prohibited. There are way too many streets to change in OSM and I’m not sure that any us in this community should be changing streets from public-to-private or private-to-public without some significant research. I have made changes in the past only to have a more advanced OSM user revert the change, even when I’ve physically been to the street and know that OSM does not accurately reflect the street.

I understand many peoples feelings on this topic as they have been discussed elsewhere in the forum. So I am coming up with a suggestion that could allow people to complete a street/road or pass it by without affecting their ability to complete a city/town.
If we had 2 sets of streets for each town. One would contain all the public streets, as it is today, and those streets would be listed under each city and would need to be run in order to complete that city. A second set of streets would contain all the streets that did NOT meet the prerequisites of the first set of streets and could be hidden. If a person ran and completed a street in the hidden list, they would get credit for that street and it would appear in their list of completed streets. So, lets say it takes 420 streets to complete Town “A”. One person may show Town “A” at 100% with 420 streets completed and another person may show that same town at 100% with 433 streets completed. The person ran the mileage and completed the street, so why not give them credit for it. This would also eliminate the need for unnecessary edits in OSM that only benefit CityStriders. Any thoughts?

I’m not sure about your solution but it’s an interesting problem which I’ve thought about since I started. Another situation is roads that are only open during special events - in these cases I wish we could get credit for them. My example is the two big bridges that go to Lisbon from the south, they are both autoestradas (highways) closed to pedestrian access, but during certain races they are able to be run. That’s the case for a lot of races for sure.

For me, I think it would be more elegant or fun if certain of these non-pedestrian roads could be like ‘easter eggs’ for people trying to be completist about their city to have to figure out how to finish those roads. Maybe they don’t show up in the street list, but there is a special badge or something. One issue with this is it would require too much local/regional knowledge for someone like James to execute, but maybe something to think about for some future version of CityStrides where there’s more local input…maybe a way for runners from a certain region to suggest these special badges and then they are reviewed or voted on by the community.

Anyways I’m getting far afield from your idea but I’m just riffing. It’s an interesting topic and thank you for bringing it up!

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My 2cents here:
i like the setup as it is now to get 100% copletion on all public streets. If someone wants to do more by goin on private roads, cycle ways,paths, etc. Just enjoy the lifemap and continue

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Just to be clear, I was not advocating a change to the way we complete a town today. I would just like to see a way to document what an individual has actually completed. In other words, I would like to see a list of what I have actually completed. @kevincharlespels makes an interesting comment about streets that may only be open during certain times of the year, or maybe a person lives on or has gotten permission from a landowner to run a street. There are many legit ways to get a street, but I don’t necessarily want to see “badges” or rewards because I don’t think we should encourage or reward people to get a private road at all costs. I didn’t want to make this part of the competition, I just wanted to have documentation of what I have completed.

Well “documentation of what I have completed” is what the purple lines on the LifeMap are for! I agree we don’t want to incentivize dangerous behavior or trespassing, at least not without plausible deniability :wink:

I agree with Patrick. After I had completed my home town Lidingö in CityStrides, I then went over to Wanderer and ran all cycleways, footways and paths. But looking at my LifeMap I was annoyed by the white line Gåshagaleden as you can see in the picture

. It’s really only a normal two lane 70 kmh road, but with the ”No pedestrians or cycles” sign. So last Sunday I went out there at 7 am and ran it anyway. Took care to stop an step aside a bit when I met the few cars out at that time. So now no more white lines in Lidingö :grinning:
For me it’s the LifeMap that shows my ”completeness”. If this would have meant my street count went up from 564 to 565 is of no importance to me…

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A potential issue is that there are many reasons that a street could exist in OSM but not in CityStrides. Public v private is just one of them. In fact OSM has a few options for variations of ‘private’ and this can be set differently for different modes of transport. While it is clear that the current set of streets/nodes does not meet everyone’s expectation, it will be difficult to come up with a different set that does. Should this alternative set be based on the same query, except the private tag? This could still exclude streets that you would like included, based on other tags. (Very simple example: it does not have a name.) It might also include highways, military terrain etc. If only OSM had a Is it runnable? tag! :wink:

It really is a somewhat interesting problem, but I feel it is rooted in one or more governance problems in OSM. OSM is out of control, IMHO. People are seeing paved items in overhead imagery and creating thoroughfares with default or guessed properties without knowing what that path actually represents. OSM also suffers from a “scope” / “charter” problem, where editors believe “anything worth mapping is worth putting in OSM”, so it includes the most ridiculous stuff un-related to contemporary automotive or emergency vehicle route planning. I am growing so tired of fixing OSM items which while running reveal themselves to be someone’s private drive or a service road or a named street within a private corporate/educational campus that happens to have a name with some kind of street sign. If you are running those [without permission], you’re trespassing, which I think we all agree is not to be encouraged, but CS is unfortunately a tail on a particularly ugly OSM dog. IMHO.

I’ve come across this situation often and at one point I was called out in OSM for making streets, access=private because what this does is that it removes that street from routing apps. Which of course we do not want to do that. So I switched them back and made them permissive, which did work for a while until someone pulled in another database to OSM and overwrote all changes in the town. But, what the overwrite did do is expose a tag that I was not aware of, ownership=private

Is it possible that @JamesChevalier can review the opportunity to exclude streets that are ownership=private

I am 100% in favor of reviewing the OSM criteria (tags) used by CS. Until I read this, I didn’t know access=private was in many cases the wrong ‘fix’ for me to be making in OSM. I’ve made a few dozen such changes myself.

However, with my underlying belief that OSM has turned into an out-of-control pigsty (where I’m actually now part of the problem) with limited apparent governance, lets not knee-jerk change CS without ensuring there is some coherent engineering in the semantic definition of these and related OSM tags.

And now we see the problem is worse than that - are OSM editors (like myself and Ken) actually using the tags appropriately? For example, which tag combination enables emergency vehicle and shipping delivery truck routing appropriate while precluding normal automotive and pedestrian traffic routing? (Might there even be combinations for emergency vehicles yet precluding delivery trucks and pedestrians, or a combination for emergency vehicles and pedestrians without other automotive traffic?) It may end up being something hotly-debated within OSM circles, I don’t know, but I think CS ought to operate based on [clear] definitions we can point to in published OSM literature.

Again, I’m not disagreeing or finding fault with @ktarullo, and in fact generally support the thinking, but I don’t want @JamesChevalier chasing poorly- or un-documented practices that are occurring in OSM.

Based on the OSM Wiki, the access=private tag seems clear to me and thus I do not have a problem tagging roads that are clearly marked as private as such. Below is what the Wiki says:

The access=private tag is indicating that the object is not to be used by the general public. Access is only with permission on an individual basis.

Note that access=private records that access is restricted, not whether or not the object is privately owned. Use ownership=private or operator:type=private to record this kind of status.

For example privately owned road with public access may be tagged like any other road with public access - without access=* tag, or with the explicit access=permissive.

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To me a private road wouldn’t need to be used in routing, they are normally cul-de-sac, no through traffic. And a road for only emergency or delivery vehicles, would probably be allowed for pedestrians

@infl8ur2shoes Randy likewise, I enjoy just running all of the “known” roads in the area, but I am not the only runner in my area and others may have a different penchant to stepping onto private property. In a way, the updates are a public service. But, I want to get them right and that means a little research with each change I make. I validate against tax rolls and tax maps as well as as much visual or common/local knowledge as possible.

@hans1 and @Scott_McClure the access=private is extremely restrictive and should only be employed in extreme cases. All private roads are on private property, but most private roads are in the public domain unless explicitly stated with a No Trespassing sign. There is generally more than one home on a private roads, especially in my area (Albany County, NY) and without a doubt in Arlington, VT area (more rural = more private roads). Most of these private roads are listed on the local tax rolls as a legal address with would exclude them from being listed as access=private, because they are used by EMS/Fire and USPS and other delivery services. Which case if used as a legal mailing address, access=permissive would not be valid, because a single entity cannot legally revoke the access of others that may be required to use the private road.

It is a fine line to make a decision about, my opinion would be that CS continue to allow any road that is designated as foot=yes, but make a distinction that if that road has ownership=private that it be removed from CS. This change would only impact “us” and would allow the private roads to stay routable, which is requirement.

" Note that it notes access, not ownership. Many privately owned roads are freely accessible for the general public without prior permission- in such case access=private would be wrong and it may be"

" Note that access=private records that access is restricted, not whether or not the object is privately owned. Use ownership=private or operator:type=private to record this kind of status."

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Really good info and input from contributors here. I tend not to overthink it and eval roads on a case-by-case basis. There are several areas that come to mind that don’t want tourists’ scooters, but are walker and hiker friendly, and the signs and property lines for each have been different. Sometimes I’ve just been lucky, and had the chance to ask permission in a friendly way. Usually, I’ll only bother to edit OSM to add new developments’ roads or edit access for the safety of other people on foot (dog bites and gun enthusiasts ruin a run).

Appreciate all the thoughtful options for making sensible updates that take other stakeholders into consideration. If I had a wish it would be that these possibly private roads, which could be accessible or not depending on time of year or dumb luck, counted to a completion percentage over 100%.

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@ktarullo - I don’t disagree with your statement about access=permissive versus access=private. In my case the roads that I mark as access=private are only the ones that have signage specifically prohibiting trespassing. Whether a road has one or one hundred houses on it and has a private road - no trespassing sign, there will obviously be cases of permissive access (visitors, deliveries, etc.) and cases of necessity access (police activity, etc.) That being said, in theory access=private should never be used by your interpretation. Again though, by OSM’s own Wiki access=private fits the bill for any street with a “private road” sign (not necessarily even with the additional no trespassing sign).

Honestly though, the lack of governance of OSM makes this debate one of the smallest issues with it. I keep having issues where people who edit OSM as a hobby (and who never set foot on the roads they modify) make modifications that are completely wrong, based on what they think they see in the satellite views (for example, extending roads well onto someone’s property).

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Completion percentage over 100% for various types of bonuses (restricted access roads such as highways that are open during certain races/events, named foot paths, etc.) is an amazing idea.

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@JamesChevalier as @aaron_fitzsenry said…is it possible to get private roads added to a percentage over 100% but most importantly have them count in the # of completed streets?

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you’re just advocating for trespassing… hey I’m in 2nd place now, better go tresmap a bunch of private roads…

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@dallas.devries Not quite what I meant. What if someone lived in a private community or military base and had authorized access? At a minimum the streets should be added to the lifetime count if someone is able to complete them. Maybe not increase the town %.

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Unfair man! I want the bridges that we get to race once a year to sorta count. I want some way to keep a personal count of the old fire roads that aren’t truly streets but are still named ways. Half of the island of New Shoreham is technically private but has walker welcome signs everywhere, they just don’t want risky rental mopeds on bumpy track roads. In many cases, I don’t know a place is private until the owner asks if I’m lost, and there’s only been a handful of times that they didn’t give permission to finish it out.

I guess it’s easy to say that it’s not a competitive thing for me, I’m in it for a different personal goal.
I do agree these shouldn’t count toward the percentage of regular city streets in any kind of ranking if this was an idea that grew legs.

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