How should I tag a foot/cycle path within a gated business complex?

[ezekielf (Zeke Farwell)]

@the13thsense

I do not believe that tagging it this way is correct as the designated tag essentially overrides the allowed access = private and allows anyone to access the path.

Your belief is correct. This is a fundamental problem with the *=designated “access” tags in OSM. They work fine and can be treated as equivalent to *=yes for publicly accessible areas, but for private areas you run into a conflict. Basically *=designated jams an extra piece of information into an access tag and this was a bad idea from the start. More discussion on this conflict here:

Difference between access=designated and access=yes

I suspect you and @SomeoneElse are debating different understandings of designated. There are some mappers who apparently consider the presence of a pictograph on a sign to be a kind of “more than legally allowed”, yet not compulsory in the sense of arbitrarily compelling someone to go on a bike ride while they’re ill and bedridden. I’ve heard various vague explanations of this phenomenon. It sounds like some countries decide between yes and designated based on who must give way to whom, as imp…