[Tagging] traffic lights

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2011/9/6 Bryce Nesbitt <bryce2 at obviously.com>:
> In the case of traffic lights if the intersection node is marked as having
> the proper control (e.g. none, stop light, stop sign, yield, TOUCAN,
> PELICAN, PUFFIN, Pegasus, etc), then additional detail is harmless.  A
> future simple router can route.  A future complex router can process the
> additional relations and details, when and if they gain sufficient traction.


+1


> Thus I encourage people not to remove the control type from the intersection
> node, but rather supplement it.  Future rendering software can suppress the
> intersection node's rendering if more detailed information is available.


+1, I agree with others here that it seems as if we needed different
tags for different abstraction levels of traffic lights: a simple one
which states "this crossing is controlled by traffic lights" and more
complex ones for the details. The established tag
highway=traffic_signals is currently used in both ways and the page
states "A traffic signal for regulating circulation." but also "As of
now, there is no well established convention.".

For complex sets there is a proposal:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Set_of_Traffic_Signals
from 2008 which not only is marked as abandoned but actually seems to
be so ( used only 48 times). The discussion references
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relations/Proposed/Junctions and
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Junction but
actually junction is used in nearly all cases for roundabouts and not
with the other values from the proposal.


cheers,
Martin