[Talk-GB] Parallel or Tiger Crossings

[Martin - CycleStreets]

> In the past few years a type of uncontrolled pedestrian crossing has 
> become common in the UK. These are a variation of a Zebra crossing, 
> however have a dedicated cycle crossing adjacent to it. This means that 
> both pedestrians and cyclists crossing the road have priority over 
> traffic on the main carriageway.
> 
> In trials over 10 years ago these were called Tiger Crossings (as yellow 
> stripes were used in trials), however since they have become a prescribed 
> crossing type, they are always referred to as "parallel crossings", both 
> in law and design. However they are still tagged as "crossing_ref=tiger", 
> which is clearly incorrect terminology.

We would like to see this annoying inconsistency sorted out too.

The original name clearly derives from the UK description before it was 
formalised. Now this crossing type has been formalised, with a name of 
'parallel crossings', it makes sense to use the proper name.

The proper name is also much more self-explanatory. It is by definition a 
pedestrian and cycle crossing that are parallel to each other. I can't 
imagine why, say, a German speaker would realise that 'tiger' refers to 
this, just because an obscure UK consultation took place in the 2010s 
before scrapping the name.


> A quick search showed there are currently 215 of these mapped in the UK, 
> mostly in London. Outside of the UK there are 1,591 cases, mainly in 
> Germany, Italy & Japan.
> 
> Would it be possible/what process would need to be taken for all of these 
> crossings (in the UK) to be batch changed to "parallel" from "tiger", and 
> the JOSM preset would also need to be updated to include "parallel" as a 
> crossing type.
> 
> Any thoughts on this, or how I can get this change to happen.

We would support a bulk change - it's a pretty precise change so ripe for 
mass-conversion.

There are unlikely to be anything other than a small number of data 
consumers who have added support for it, so getting this fixed before it 
gets much more widely used makes sense.


Martin,                     **  CycleStreets - For Cyclists, By Cyclists
Developer, CycleStreets     **  https://www.cyclestreets.net/