[Tagging] How to tag traffic islands ?

[Paul Johnson]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 9:02 AM, Gerd Petermann <
GPetermann_muenchen at hotmail.com> wrote:

> okay, thanks. I guess you don't call them traffic islands, do you?
>
> I fear I got lost because of the special cases ...
>
Not in that case.  Somewhere between a traffic island/median and a center
turnlane would be a "flush median", which is the same as that center turn
lane, but rather ends being open when a new lane in one direction only
replaces it, it tapers, and both yellow lines on both sides are solid.
These are treated the same as a raised median (in theory; in practice
people frequently cross them.  It's fairly consistent between states that
you're not supposed to occupy that lane, but whether or not you can turn
across them from a driveway, to access a driveway, or use them as
additional queuing space for a turn lane varies by state, with "when in
doubt, act like it's a physical barrier" being a consistently reasonable
assumption).

http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/htm/2009r1r2/part3/part3b.htm#section3B01
describes the various kinds of flush medians, center lanes and reversible
lanes you'll find in the US, all of which would fall under the
lanes:both_ways=* key.  Some parts of Canada as recently as the last decade
(if not perhaps still today), and some parts of the US last century, also
inverted the two-way left turn lane markings to have the solid line inside,
dashed line outside to mean "this lane may be used for passing only in both
directions", an arrangement that led to the term "suicide lane", which in
modern American slang translates to any lane that allows vehicles traveling
in either direction (though I've heard cyclists also refer to the bicycle
lane on a two-way cycletrack between oncoming cyclists and oncoming
motorists as a suicide lane, which is fairly accurate since it puts
cyclists riding in that lane into the exact situation that makes riding
against traffic on a sidewalk a deadly proposition).
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