[OSM-talk] [tagging] Road crossings proposal - status?

Steve Hill steve at nexusuk.org
Wed May 7 12:03:04 BST 2008


On Wed, 7 May 2008, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:

> Heh. While in london someone tried to explain to me what was so
> special about all these crossing types. They have names for crossings
> that here in NL would "normal". A crossing with a separate light for
> bikes, that's like every crossing in NL. All sorts of variations. I
> don't think I've ever seen a crossing for horses, they just cross.

It seems to me that instead of referring to a crossing by name, we should 
just list its properties.  e.g. comething like:

highway=crossing
crossing=uncontrolled|traffic_signals
island=yes|no
bicycle=yes|no
foot=yes|no
horse=yes|no

That way you don't need to know about the specific types of crossing 
(which vary from region to region anyway) - the properties of the crossing 
are pretty obvious from just looking at the tags with no further knowledge 
needed.

The various (UK specific) crossing names do give you further information 
such as whether the signal lights are on the near/far side of the road, 
whether it does anything to detect the presence of pedestrians on the 
crossing, etc.  But if people think this level of detail is important, 
those sorts of properties can also be added as individual tags.


For the record, the common crossings in the UK are:

Toucan crossing (Two-Can): cyclists and cycle across at the same time as 
pedestrians walk across.  The lights show both a "green bicycle" and a 
"green man" on the far side of the road, which is activated by a 
push-button with a time delay.

Puffin crossing (Pedestrian User-Friendly INtelligent): pedestrians only 
(obviously cyclists are considered pedestrians if they are walking 
with their bike instead of cycling).  The lights show a "green man" on the 
near side of the road, which is activated with a push-button with a time 
delay.  These also detect the presence of the pedestrian so that the 
lights won't change if the pedestrian is nolonger there (e.g. the 
pedestrian crossed early).  They detect the presence of a pedestrian on 
the crossing so they shouldn't turn green for the traffic while you are 
still crossing.

Pelican crossing (PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled crossing): pedestrians only. 
The lights show a "green man" on the far side of the road, which is 
activated with a push-button with a time delay.  Pretty-much the same as a 
Toucan crossing, but cyclists can't ride across it.

Pegasus crossing: Like a pelican crossing, but for horse riders.  They 
have two push-buttons at different heights so that horse riders can reach 
them easilly.  Instead of a "green man" on the far side of the road, they 
have a "green horse".

Zebra crossing: Pedestrians always have the right of way.

(Wikipedia has some fairly good descriptions of these).

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence





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