Whilst out surveying, I stumbled upon a gate that is the entrance and exit into an apartment complex. Node: 7560986509 | OpenStreetMap
Anyone can exit the gate, however, only residents can enter the gate from the street. How would one tag this? There are other public ways leading into the complex that don’t have gates.
Anyone can exit the gate, however,
Oh that is an interesting one… I’d still say access=private though.
Maybe using something like foot:forward=private and foot:backward=permissive (as the permission to exit is presumably revocable). The gate would probably have to be in the middle of a way rather than an end node for this to work.
I guess this is the default for all apartment complexes with gates and by the way, also for entrances to apartment buildings (and most buildings in general). I agree there are also alternatives: without gates, with open gates or door (during the day?), with guards, … depending on the area or region, so if there are gates, the basic idea is not letting everybody in but everybody out.
At least in my neck of the woods, this is part of the fire code. I.e., there must be a way to exit any building and its courtyard without having to unlock the exits. It might be worth to tag the exceptions: gates that require a key also to exit. There would, presumably, be very few of these (military bases?)
Once, a long time ago, I myself did consider the same question that popped to @okwithmydecay. This thought came about because I myself lock my bicycle in a gated courtyard, where the gate is unlocked during days, but locks in the evening. The current routing scheme (or at least at the time, haven’t checked this since) doesn’t (or didn’t) account for the fact that one could leave the locked area also after the opening hours, even if one could no longer enter it. Of course, this works only if you yourself never leave the building that the courtyard belongs to. Which is precisely why I dropped the idea of proposing tagging this.
some emergency exits are secured with an alarm, you can open them, but it’ll start ringing (around here they’re usually signed so people don’t activate the alarm inadvertently. Worth tagging?
As I understand it from the OP, the area behind the gate can be reached from public roads from other directions, so it really is private access only in one direction. That’s a bit different from an area which is gated at all of its access points, which is what I think you’re describing.
There is this possibly abandoned Proposal:Emergency access & exits - OpenStreetMap Wiki which might have some scope to discuss tagging for whether an entrance=emergency or exit=emergency has an alarm.
Oh yeah, checked the link in the OP just now. Seems that many streets nearby have gates (though the fences are not mapped), but that Green Ferry Way does admit entrance to the area. Maybe oneway would be better than private in this case. If the fences and gates are correctly mapped, and one can (physically and legally) always enter the gated area from Green Ferry Way and exit through the gate to Forest Road.
That is correct. You can enter the complex from other roads without passing through restricted gates, and you can exit the gate in question simply by pressing the exit button. However, the public can’t make the same journey in reverse.