The Right to Roam, or the Wrong to Roam?

Dear Diary,

One of the three main sources on which I'm relying to plan my baseline hikes is a scan of North Seattle, last week, in OpenStreetMap, as constrained by the King County Parcel Viewer.  I noticed early on that most daylit creeks were on private land.  However, in the area between Carkeek and Golden Gardens parks, more or less the middle of western North Seattle, there were two creeks more or less in the middle of undeveloped streets.

So I began thinking of undeveloped streets as a gold mine of unrecognised public land, just waiting for publicity.

But around then, I started to accumulate evidence that even developed streets aren't public land.  For example, I downloaded block-by-block data on Seattle's streets, from a Seattle Department of Transportation GIS application, and in that enormous dataset SDOT claimed to own only 125 blocks.  It attributed 625 to Washington state's Department of Transportation, a scattering to other owners, and the vast majority to no owner at all.

I'll get to this question's answer below, but first I want to tell you, dear Diary, about a book I found while hunting for that answer.

This Land Is Our Land:  How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take It Back by Ken Ilgunas

Ilgunas previously wrote a book titled Trespassing across America, and this 2018 book is his attempt to provide the philosophical basis for the story that book tells.

A friend about as consistently right wing as I am left wing told me, long ago, that one of the Unabomber's main complaints was that he couldn't just go whatever direction he wanted, whenever he wanted.  I scoffed that he couldn't have grown up in forested land, to have such a silly view, and there the discussion ended.

But Ilgunas argues that property rights have, over the past two centuries, gone too far, and American Supreme Courts have been instrumental in this.  Some billionaires now own more square miles than some U.S. states occupy.  And "the right to exclude" has gone from being a far-fetched legal fantasy to being seen as central to the whole concept of property.  He notes that "No Trespassing" signs have a history, and it's a surprisingly recent history.

He acknowledges that a lot of countries share the American extreme view of property, but goes into detail about how Sweden has developed completely differently, and how both England and Wales, and Scotland, had more or less imitated the Swedes.

I can't help thinking Ilgunas knows his ideas have no chance here.  He explicitly mentions millions of homeless people, but never considers the implications for his dreams. 

The Wrong to Roam?

Ilgunas acknowledges that a lot of people dislike the phrase "the right to roam" as just as absolute as what it fights, and prefer something like "responsible access".

By no standard of responsible access is Seattle a good place to start roaming.  One of the key elements of responsibility is respecting the owners' privacy, and most lots in Seattle are much too small for trespassers to do that.  (Part of privacy, after all, is not just not being watched, but not having others obtruded on your own view.)

Washington state is also a lousy place to start roaming.  I don't know that shoreline access is really guaranteed by English common law, which some people who discuss these things say it is.  But Washington is distinctive in that, according to Bainbridge Island journalist Christopher Dunagan, neither the courts nor the legislature have ever specifically addressed the subject.

And then there's the answer to my original question.

Who owns Seattle's streets?

I had realised, by this time, that my searches were wrong.  Searching on 'streets ownership Washington', as opposed to 'streets ownership Seattle', got me promptly to a page from the Municipal Research and Services Center, one of the public/private organisations I told you, dear Diary, about in one of the library hours pages.  Which says something I'll get to shortly, but for now let's answer the question.

"Sometimes, the municipality will own the property on a public right-of-way.  Usually, however, the property owners next to the street own the property, which usually goes to the centerline of the right-of-way, and the municipality has secured the easement for public travel."

Two references follow.  I read one, Kiely v. Graves, which says over and over things like "when a dedication specifies that property is to be used as a thoroughfare, this is strong evidence of intent to grant only an easement.". Unanimously, per the Washington Supreme Court of 2012.

OK, so the other thing the MRSC said is, "If a right-of-way has not been opened and improved, the property owner can use it like they would the rest of their property.  However, they may have to stop using it if the right-of-way is opened and improved in the future."

Nope, no trove of little-known public property here!

Implications for the shoreline street ends

What led me to start writing this page in you, dear Diary, is that I was getting ready to add the shoreline street ends to the lists and maps, and I noticed again the lack of them in most of northwest Seattle.

At first I described the shoreline street ends as following clear rules, then I found lots of exceptions, and said no, they were just a land grab.  Now I'm beginning to think that while they were certainly a land grab, they focused on an old right Washington doesn't allow, shoreline access, and they almost certainly did have clear criteria after all.

There is no undeveloped street action north of NW 57th St on North Seattle's Shilshole Bay coast.  On the Parcel Viewer, if you've panned it south along that coast, it's uninterrupted by any of the lines meaning public right of way, until 57th, where those lines jump out at you.

 

Which is, if I'm right, the criterion the city used.  Streets that stopped while their right-of-way easements continued to the water.

I'll let you know, dear Diary.  In the meantime, I have lots more mapping and listing to do, so I can hike tomorrow.  Happy days and nights until I start telling you about that, dear Diary.