List of public roads in NSW

[Mullaitivu_83]

Hi all,
Does anyone know if local councils in NSW, or an other government body, maintain a list or register of small public roads ?

I have read many threads on this website where there is some discussion about “public” or “private” access to a particular location and some issue about gates or restrictions on a road is mentioned. I am curious whether such debates might be settled or assisted by resort to some kind of official list of public roads in the relevant local government area, if such exists.

For example: recently, I was planning a walk in a location in regional NSW and I wanted to know if a minor road shown on maps between a major public road (linking two reasonably sized towns) and the northern boundary of the location-of-interest was a public road. I had to ask two government bodies: the local shire council and the government agency managing the location to get a clear answer. It turned out the road marked on maps was public along one half of its length and private for the remainder. I thought all this trouble might have been avoided if an accessible list of minor public roads existed, which I could consult at my leisure.

I thought someone with knowledge of public road maintenance in NSW might know if such documents exist or whether it is all a matter of different council practices and/or local knowledge.

Does anyone know ?

[tastrax]

You can 'clip and ship' data from sixmaps BUT the road segments layer doesnt have an explicit field that indicates private versus public road

https://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/clipnship.html

[tastrax]

It appears the Road Corridor layer may have private versus public....if you can find a way to download it

https://www.spatial.nsw.gov.au/news/nsw ... ion_portal

[Warin]

A public list, nor any list has not existed in the past. Why not?

Well... start with who maintains these roads that are public?

Main roads dept (or what ever they are called now) [major roads]
Local councils [minor roads]
National Parks [some roads within NPs ... not all of them open to public vehicles]
Forestry NSW [some roads within state forests]

So that is at least 4 separate entities... they usually talk to one another locally ... but a combined picture .... err ... looks like the 'Spatial Collaboration Portal' might be a hope... but I have not used it yet and I think it will be very early days yet.

[Mullaitivu_83]

Hi all,
Thanks for your suggestions. I’ll investigate the new portal and if it does have information about the “public” v “private” status of roads I’ll post it here.

[madpom]

Wow. That is surprisingly hard to do in NSW.

My normal advice is start with the land title registry - download it as a GIS layer, filter for just crown owned land. Look at the categories of land that are left in your list and come up with a custom filter of the database that includes all types of road and excludes all else.

But puzzlingly there doesn't seem to be a publicly available GIS layer for land titles in NSW. Or am I missing it somewhere?

As a contractor needing frequently to access private land I'm used to land ownership information being publicly available - 'a matter of public record'. I do wonder how my NSW counterparts cope without it!

[Mullaitivu_83]

I’ll investigate the land registry lead. Surely I can’t be the first person to ask this question.

[Mullaitivu_83]

Hi all,
I’ve now had a look at the new spatial data portal. According to the description of the “Road” layer is: “Represents dedicated public roads which are open ways for the passage of vehicles, persons or animals on land”. It would seem that the trick is to switch on the “Roads” layer and swItch off other layers. This shows just public roads, and almost nothing else. There are a couple of other layers called “road...” something else e.g “road corridor”. The description of the data comprising these layers doesn’t specify the relation of these dataset to the “roads” dataset.

Take a look at this new website and I’d like to hear your experiences.

[Equivocator]

But puzzlingly there doesn't seem to be a publicly available GIS layer for land titles in NSW. Or am I missing it somewhere?

I wonder if the recent sell off has anything to do with it? What a stupid idea. At least they got a few stadiums (they can't use at the moment) out of it...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-12/$2.6-billion-price-tag-on-nsw-land-titles-registry-sale/8439176

OP;
Just a heads up; Just because it's a public gazetted road doesn't necessarily mean the public has free and unfettered access either.
Many roads are "Roads" but also have farming gazettals or any number of other lease/restrictions over them. Local Councils also often barr legal access to some road parcels for a variety of reasons.

Some roads (especially rural) are also just allocated roads, so the 'land for the road' exists within a block somewhere but doesn't exist on a Survey plan (i.e. legally) and is arbitrarily given a definition so the GIS/Asset Managers don't cry.

[Mullaitivu_83]

Ok; am I correct in thinking: 1. an existing “physical” minor roads crossing private property are either marked on a survey plan or not; 2. if they are marked on a survey plan they might be gazetted as a public road or not; 3. If they are gazetted as a public road they might have a restriction to public access granted to the landowner or not; 4. If a restriction to public access is granted the fact of that restriction might be on the public record, somewhere, or commercial-in-confidence e.t.c; 5. If a restriction is on the public record, somewhere, the fact of the existence of that public record is not held by just one agency.

If statements 1 to 5 are correct then an appropriate search strategy involves a sequence of conditional probability from statement 1 forwards. The first step is assessing the conditional probability of statement 1 would require a comparison of a topographic map, showing the physical road, with a survey plan. So, where are survey plans held ?

[Equivocator]

1. Not always. Also, depending on the road there might be a physical road, and a seperate road reserve. They don't always correlate. Although they're meant too...
2. If they are on a current (registered) plan, they will be a public road
3. Correct. There may be access restrictions by State or Local Government action.
4. It will be noted on the Land Title if it's a state action. NSW government (in their wisdom) sold off their title register to be administered by private firms 'more efficiently' so I'm not sure the current process (i'm QLD based.) Local Governments should have it in a Public Gazettle document, but sometimes it is just signs or deterrent fencing.
5. It could be held just in the Local Council registry. It could be a statement burried in an official reply letter to a specific individual (with a copy stored somewhere.) You could find it with a Right to information request.

Example: Duck Creek Road in Lamington QLD. Though that's only for Vehicles just as an example, you can walk it. For years there was little/no information other than some vague replies by Scenic Rim Council on Facebook posts asking if it was open yet.

Also this "Not a road but also a road" that I'm currently reinstating/defining at the moment. https://i.imgur.com/AAE6Q7B.png
The road exists, it was created and dedicated as new road. It's legally a gazetted road. Just it's exact location (size, area, position) was never officially defined by a Surveyor. It's a Sealed Bitumen road, that gets 100's of cars over it each day, but doesn't yet exist where it exists... legally speaking.

Survey plans are held, in QLD, by DNRME (soon to be renamed to DNR) and you can access them at your local Titles office. QLD is pretty good with open data though. So I'd start on QLD Globe with the road parcels layer, or download the entire Cadastre; https://www.data.qld.gov.au/dataset/cad ... and-series

[Equivocator]

Oh, Undullah was another fun one. It involved Native Title as well.
https://imgur.com/a/KPUmqCB