What Is a Right of Way?
A right of way (ROW) is a legally established corridor granting a person, entity, or the public the right to pass through, use, or maintain infrastructure across a defined strip of land. The term encompasses both the legal right itself and the physical strip of land over which that right exists. Rights of way are fundamental to infrastructure: roads, utilities, railroads, and pipelines all depend on rights of way to connect across private and public land.
In real estate, the right of way concept appears in two primary contexts: public rights of way (streets, highways, sidewalks) held or controlled by government entities, and private rights of way granted as easements to specific parties for specific purposes. Understanding the distinction and the scope of any right of way affecting a property is essential due diligence for buyers, developers, and investors.
Public Rights of Way
Public rights of way are strips of land dedicated to or acquired by a government entity—city, county, state, or federal—for public transportation infrastructure and associated uses. The public right of way for a typical residential street includes:
- The roadway (paved or unpaved travel lanes)
- Sidewalks on one or both sides
- Parkways (the planted strips between the sidewalk and the curb)
- Storm drain infrastructure
- Utility trenches for water, sewer, and other public utilities
The right-of-way width for residential streets typically ranges from 40 to 60 feet. Arterial and collector streets are wider; freeways and highways can have rights of way of 200 feet or more.
Land within the public right of way is generally not part of the adjacent property owner's usable land, even if the owner's legal description extends to the street centerline. The owner cannot build structures, park vehicles, or create private encroachments within the right-of-way without a specific encroachment permit from the governing agency. This limitation is separate from the setback requirement, which measures from the right-of-way line (or property line) to the nearest building.
Private Rights of Way
Private rights of way are easements created by agreement, grant, prescription, or court order that allow specific parties to travel across or use a strip of private land. Common examples include:
Access easements: When a parcel is landlocked—surrounded by other private parcels with no direct street frontage—an access easement across an adjacent parcel provides the legal right to reach a public road. These are sometimes called private road easements or driveway easements.
Railroad rights of way: Railroads typically operate on fee-simple land or on easements acquired through condemnation or agreement. Abandoned railroad rights of way are a significant legal issue: when railroads cease operations, disputes arise about whether the right of way reverts to adjacent landowners or remains with the railroad company.
Pipeline and utility rights of way: Private energy and telecommunications companies hold easements—often described as rights of way—across private land for pipelines, power lines, and fiber optic cables.
How Rights of Way Appear in Property Records
Public rights of way are established through dedication (when a developer dedicates streets to the public as part of a subdivision approval), condemnation (when the government exercises eminent domain to acquire the corridor), or the original government survey (for many western states where public land was surveyed before settlement). They appear in subdivision plats, condemnation records, and deeds of dedication.
Private rights of way are recorded as easements in the public land records and appear in a title search as encumbrances on the servient parcel. They also appear in the dominant parcel's chain of title as appurtenant easements that benefit the property.
Tophap Explorer surfaces parcel and public record data that can help identify right-of-way boundaries and adjacent infrastructure. Strabo provides geospatial data integration that can map right-of-way corridors relative to parcels, useful for development feasibility analysis. DocuPull can assist in extracting recorded easement instruments from county records to review the specific terms and dimensions of a private right of way.
Rights of Way and Property Valuation
The presence of a right of way affects property value depending on its type, location, and width:
- A narrow public street right of way along the front of a developed residential lot has minimal effect on value—it is expected and does not impair use.
- A wide utility right of way crossing the buildable portion of a development site can substantially reduce the developable area and therefore the value.
- An access easement benefiting a landlocked property adds significant value to that property (the dominant estate) and imposes some burden on the servient parcel, typically with modest value impact.
- A railroad right of way through a commercial property may create liability and use constraints disproportionate to the physical width of the corridor.
In appraisal, the impact of a right of way is typically addressed through an adjustment in the sales comparison approach or, for larger commercial properties, through a discounted value analysis of the burdened area.
Right of Way Vacations
When a public right of way is no longer needed for its designated purpose—a dead-end street that was never developed, a paper street that was platted but never constructed—the governing agency may formally vacate it. Vacation returns the right-of-way land to the adjacent property owners, typically half to each side of the corridor.
Vacation is not automatic upon non-use; it requires a formal resolution or ordinance from the governing body, notice to utility companies and affected parties, and recording of the vacation order. Even after vacation, utility easements within the former right of way typically survive.
For investors evaluating development sites that include former or proposed rights of way, understanding the vacation process and its effect on buildable area is important. See /solutions/ai-tools-real-estate-investors-market-research for AI tools supporting site analysis and regulatory research. HomesCore provides property intelligence that includes land use and regulatory context. Compare research platforms at /compare/fundhomes-vs-lofty.