[Alex63]

Noted (I'm actually rural, and have an easement on my own property), but an easement is quite different from a public right of way in the UK. An easement does not create a public right, and (at least in WA state) must be negotiated between the landowners.

[toast0]

WA state has a private way of necessity [1] (edit: i had the wrong word here). If my land has no access except through your land, you may not deny me access. Although you're welcome to attempt to negotiate with me to get to something that works well for both of us, but if not, I can do something reasonable.

WA also has easements by traditional access, but it seemed pretty limited and easy for property owners to avoid, when I was looking into it.

[1] https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=8.24&full=true

[ghaff]

Although my understanding (through some personal experience) is that e.g. in Maine it's OK to have only water access. May not still be true but seemed to be in a case I was familiar with.

[dylan604]

Most people I know in these situations that are neighborly will chip in to the neighbor that "owns" the access to help maintain that access.

[cogman10]

It's a little more tricky than that. There are implicit public easements that get created merely by a path being open and commonly used. That's pretty close to the right in the UK.

If you can show that you've been using a specific path for years the owner of that path can lose rights to block access. This is why you see some land owners putting up no-trespassing signs and jealously guarding their land and access. They don't want to lose the ability to effectively control their paths. IIRC, this is a common law thing. It's a bit like trademarks in the sense that land owners need to guard their land otherwise they lose a chunk of it.

The squishiness here is I don't think there's a specified amount of time before the public easement is granted.

[crtified]

The fundamental difference between the private and public R'sOW is who the 'agreement' is between.

With private, the agreement is by - or between - private landowner(s).

With public, it's between every applicable private landowner, and the governing authority.

[dylan604]

There's also easements into greenbelts. There are some places around lakes where you can only access the publicly accessible areas by crossing private property. Usually, there is a designated path for that access, and the property owner cannot block it from public use.

[myself248]

Then you get into the peculiarity of "corner crossing", where four parcels meet at an infinitesimal point. Can you cross the corner and not be considered to have trespassed onto one of the other pieces? It's.... tricky.

[ghaff]

Yeah. I live in at least exurban area and I have some specific easements I negotiated when I bought. And, in practice, I have more. But if the neighboring owner really wanted to put up some barbed wire fences or the one or two owners along the river walk I often take outside of conservation land really wanted to clamp down, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have legal options.

Per another comment, some of it at least is that many people really don't want hunting (or destructive off-road vehicles) on their land but have no problem with the occasional person taking a walk on a more-or-less established path.

Even in the UK, I've had an issue with something basically identified as an item of interest on an OS map and getting yelled at for sticking my nose in a gate.