The Wiki update from October 2023 suggests that “service ways are usually not part of the public street network,” which raises concerns that this might lead to more lazy mapping practices. Specifically, there’s a risk that highway classifications might be switched instead of using the appropriate access tags.
In my view, service roads are minor, non-thru traffic routes that don’t fit into categories like residential or agricultural/forestry tracks. From a routing perspective, they are generally less important than highway=residential but more significant than highway=track.
Many service roads provide access to buildings, stations, driveways, and utilities on private land, but some may indeed be public, similar to how some residential roads can be private (e.g., gated communities).
There seems to be misconception that service roads are inherently private, and this is often reflected in renderers. For example, maps.me only displays service roads at high zoom levels after highway=track, while other renderers seem to require access=yes for proper visibility.
I agree that highway=* for any * does not imply private ownership. For service roads I can see that service=driveway might strongly suggest access=destination. But for the rest and especially for service=alley I would assume public access unless otherwise tagged.
I agree that it could lead to confusion, for some people would assume it means it’s not of public usage (let’s not forget that not everyone has English as their first language, so the language barrier could lead in such assumptions).
I would suggest to rephrase that text a bit and to clarify that it isn’t related to access restriction, and means more like the typical usage (that is, not a central road) and not necessarily maintained by any public authority (what @yvecai said pretty much).
Author of the wiki update from October 2023 here. The previous text was the following:
Service roads are not parts of the public road network
service=alley ways typically are part of the public network. The other types of service roads usually are not, with some regional differences (some countries have more public parking lots than others). Usually ≠ always, so I think the new text is correct.
Usually there is no change to classification, with occasional exceptions.
For a long time, many routers treated service roads like this too.
highway=service applies to several specific cases, all non-thru ways. But one common type used for minor roads that don’t fit other categories is highway=unclassified, it is important to know the distinction.
“Jaagpaden” (towpaths) in the Flemish region in Belgium are legally “dienstwegen” (serviceways) maintained by the rivers and canals authority;
they play an increasingly important role as “Fiets-o-strades” (bicycle highways) - thus at least here no connection between maintenance authority and access.
There are restrictions on class of vehicle, e.g. use by 'speed-pedelecs ( max. 45km/h & max. 4kW electric motor but pedal-driven cycles), while motor vehicles are usually limited to service or a permit to access a specific destination.
Those Jaagpaden allowed to tow a boat all the way along the body of water, connecting to other Jaagpaden at canal/river junctions, but also to local ways, thus were part of the ‘road network’; after towed boats gave way to motor-driven ships some sections of some Jaagpaden were (part- of fulltime) gated for safe (un-)loading at quaysides.
To expand on @yvecai’s answer: I don’t think this sentence in the Wiki is talking about ownership.
Where I live, as far as I know, the public roads are those managed by some government authority - they repair potholes, enforce parking restrictions, etc. For private roads, it is the landowner who has the responsibility to repair them.
But you can have a public road on private land. For example when there is a new housing development built by a private company, the local authority can ‘adopt’ the road. The land will still be owned by the developer, but the council take over the management of the road.
The council maintain a list of public roads. In the city centre they’re easy to recognise because they’ll generally have some sort of parking restriction (lines painted on the road, sings put up by the council). In a way this is more verifiable than the question how important a road is in the highway network. Where I map, highway=service corresponds quite well to whether or not the road is public/adopted or not. (Ignoring service=alley which is an outlier.)
In short, highway=service does not imply private ownership, but that sentence in the Wiki is not about private ownership either.
It could probably be explained better, because I can see how it could be confusing if you don’t know about adopted roads on private land, and maybe not every country has that distinction.
The change you made is definitely an improvement. However, my concern is with the inclusion of the introductory paragraph from the previous author (@Duja). I feel it’s unnecessary and can lead to mapping issues, as access and ownership should not be implied for any highway classification.
Well, it might vary by region, but in Thailand, highways tagged as unclassified are considered collector roads in urban areas or ‘quaternary’ thru-traffic routes in rural areas. So, they are generally more important than other minor roads.
I think I was the one who originally wrote that, in August 2023, and that formulation is essentially still in the article (Fernando later only added qualifier “usually”):
Service roads are not parts of the public road network, and may not always be accessible to the general public, which can be explicitly specified by an additional {{Tag|access}} tag.
Before that edit, there was essentially… nothing. I agree with the above:
…and I’m open to suggestions how to make it more clear. But there’s a long way from “not part of the public road network” to “privately owned”.
The issue was that people started to use “service” as a “Small unclassified” or the “smallest road” - which is simply wrong.
See definition of unclassified:
highway=unclassified is used for minor public roads, typically at the lowest level of whatever administrative hierarchy is used in that jurisdiction.
There is a hierarchy of public roads which is like motorway/primary/secondary/tertiary/unclassified|residential - These roads are maintained by the public authorities and are by definition open to public use, and unclassified is the lowest classification in the public road network.
Then you special ways like track (mostly agricultural usage) and service (Typically privately owned, on private property - see definition - industrial complexes and the like) which does until here says nothing about access restrictions. Its just a matter of mindset/classification or maintenance responsibilities.
So the rephrasing was an attempt not in describing what a service is, but in describing what its not. The attempt on making a distinction to unclassified|residential as the lowest classification of public roads.
It may be that service roads are open to the public, it may be prohibited. The case here is that an “access=private” on a public road network should be in all cases an error. Whereas on service roads that may very well be valid.
For the German case:
We have the legal process of “Widmung” which is a administrative process of declaring a road a public road. It is beeing designated for public usage. Within that process roads also get their names. So at least in Germany it is very unlikely that a service road has a name - as - it got its name by designation to the public so it cant be a service road. (I know there are exceptions for example when once public roads are beeing sold off they may keep their name). As a simple detection of a service road - These do not carry public infrastructure like street lighting, drains, official street signs.
While I agree with the wiki definitions, I don’t understand why residential streets, which are minor roads with no through traffic, should be included in this hierarchy.
highway=unclassified: “The least important through roads in a country’s system – i.e. minor roads of a lower classification than tertiary, but which serve a purpose other than access to properties. (Often link villages and hamlets.)”
That’s a problematic generalization. You imply that service roads aren’t maintained by public authorities, which isn’t true for many cases, such as many service=alley, service=slipway, and service=emergency_access.
In Thailand, we have gated housing communities that are privately maintained and secured. They are tagged as highway=residential and access=private.
The wiki says that planned urban collectors/distributors should be mapped as highway=tertiary.
A publicly maintained, all-access road that leads nowhere other than a largely uninhabited area (such as the middle of a desert) would typically be mapped as highway=unclassified, despite being less important (in socioeconomic or mobility terms) than a typical highway=residential.
@Andrew_Chadwick, should we understand that there are two levels of urban collectors, the main one mapped as highway=tertiary and a minor one mapped as highway=unclassified?
So for me it really depends on the context of each gated community individually. If the inner ways look like regular streets, I map them as highway=residential. If they look like parking aisles or driveways, I map them as highway=service.
For clarity, local public roads like residential have “through access” in the sense that it is legal to travel their length from start to finish. In this sense, they are not access=destination, but access=yes. They do not have an emergent “through traffic” in the sense of being designed/intended/interesting for traveling medium to long distances in an urban environment. And they are better (designed/intended/interesting) for local access than service=alley, so in a mesh of local ways, one would prefer to drive around the alleys. So a hierarchy still exists even if we ignore the terminal leaves of the classification tree.
For service roads I can see that service=driveway might strongly suggest access=destination. But for the rest and especially for service=alley I would assume public access unless otherwise tagged.
for alley I agree, but service=drive_through is likely access=customers.
