I have been researching this exact same issue. I found a few streets in the nicer neighborhoods that have a private street sign but are marked public on the map. If there is a gate, or a no trespassing sign, I have been leaving it alone. However, if it is just marked “private” I have been running them. No issues so far.
There’s a hood near my old hood, that cars non residential cars are not allowed (there’s a gate), but pedestrians are (no gate on sidewalk). Its still in osm as public, or at least was. So from a CS perspective, it’s not clear what’s correct. But for all osm users, i guess it should be private.
I would tag that road’s access info in OSM as motor_vehicles=private OR permit and foot=yes
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Great idea. I’m still coming up to speed on tags. With this edit, would it the be in CS?
Further comments on roads marked “private”.
I personally find that this one of the most confusing areas with OSM editing is “What actually is a private road?” and can you access it on foot, in a car, etc? There are many streets with the word “private” on the street sign that are actually quite accessible by foot.
To reference the OSM wiki entry regarding access tags, this link: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:access#Access_tag_values defines key access of permissive and private as:
-access=permissive You can go through it until when the owner close it
-access=private You are not allowed to go through it
So using access=private is incorrect or at least too restrictive. If the road is open to pedestrian traffic then should be marked as access=yes or at least access=permissive.
The Wiki entry even notes further down in that page about access=private: “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 access=permissive if the owner can revoke this permission at their own discretion.”
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It’s doubly confusing on access=private as
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:access
and
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:access%3Dprivate
sort of contradict each other.
The first one implies more to do with what is supposed to happen
“Access values describe legal permissions/restrictions and should follow ground truth; e.g., signage or legal ruling and not introduce guesswork. It does not describe common or typical use, even if signage is generally ignored.”
whereas the 2nd one
"Note that access=private is intended to indicate that access is restricted , not whether the object is privately owned or not.
Practically (at least for me in the UK) if there is a “Private Road” road sign but there is no gate (or always open) then almost always you can “physically” access it on foot and indeed such roads often have cut throughs to designated public footpaths. So think what was suggested above as motor_vehicles=private and foot=yes largely describes the practical access and indeed the second article even says " Unfortunately as of 2023 access=private is widely used as a duplicate of access=permissive as well as ownership=private and should not be expected to match the originally intended meaning. Problem is I have never seen the ownership tag being used
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That is interesting and its no wonder that we as runners and mappers are so confused! Eventually we all seem to get to the point of walking/running the segment as long as there is no sturdy gate, ‘no trespassing’ sign, etc.
It is annoying when OSM fake do-gooders who feel the need to go thru a section and mark streets as Access=Private, which sets everything to private. It happened recently in Boston when we saw 28 streets deleted in a single OSM update. I and others reversed those entries but in the future I will try using motor_vehicles=private and foot=yes. Perhaps the OSM mappers (often seem to be newer profiles) who feel the need to stamp private won’t see these so easily?
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I’m sure that everyone has seen amusing signs like this on their journeys. I liked it particularly for the aggressiveness of the signage! 
I did not walk this segment and later edited it as Access=Private in OSM.
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Regarding private road: I think OSM-editing CityStriders need to keep the “big picture” in mind: Accuracy is more important than node-count, for @JamesChevalier.
I used to get pissed when people would delete buildings and highways from OSM, because otherwise, where is the challenge? Same goes for fence jumping, dodging shotgun wielding Americans, etc.
But again, I came to see that accuracy (and avoiding law-breaking) is not only better for OSM, but ultimately better for CityStrides. Unfortunately, heatmapping legal streets is very easy. But… you can make it harder by moving to a new city every time you complete one 
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