I’ve noticed that we seem to have a lot of gated roads in India. I thought all of them were access=private, but it turns out many roads have gates installed just to prevent thoroughfare/streetside parking. Tagging such roads as access=private would be inappropriate, since if you want to walk/cycle in, its perfectly legal to do so. Even cars are allowed, but only if they need access to one of the properties on the road. I think we can instead move to tagging such roads with access=destination, or perhaps more appropriately motor_vehicle=destination. access=private would only apply to roads belonging to gated communities, where legal access to the general public is restricted.
yes exactly, we also have many roads with lift gates and “private road” signs, which actually are not be tagged as access=private in OSM because they are open to pedestrians and bikes, only motorcar access is restricted (it is mainly about parking). We tag them as you wrote, motor_vehicle=private or destination and foot=yes and bicycle=yes on the lift_gate.
That is perfect tagging for “since if you want to walk/cycle in, its perfectly legal to do so. Even cars are allowed, but only if they need access to one of the properties on the road”