[OSM-talk] Traffic lights

[Peter Miller]

On 13 Jun 2009, at 08:44, Shaun McDonald wrote:

> I just put the traffic lights on the nodes. Life is too short to spend
> time grouping them. There is too much Tiger fixup and unnamed, or
> completely missing roads to enter. If the junction is large, you'll
> probably have a longer than normal waiting time, thus it shouldn't be
> a problem if you go through an extra set in the model.

It certainly makes sense to me to add a traffic signal tag to the  
'junction' relation. There was a discussion some time ago on this  
subject which also concluded that there should be provision for a tag  
for the actual signal head.

Personally I would suggest that we add a traffic_signals=yes to the  
'junction' relation and create a new point feature tagged  
'highway=signal-head' for the actual poles. I guess that someone at  
some point will ask for 'highway=signal-loop' for indicating where the  
triggering loop is as well.

Finally, is the term 'Intersection' a useful one for complex junctions  
of this sort to distinguish it from a single T junction or cross-road?  
The term Junction would always then relate to a single node, and the  
term Intersection would refer to a relation which combines a number of  
nodes/ways. The simplest Intersection would be a staggered junction,  
but spaghetti junction in B'ham would also be an intersection.



Regards,




Peter



>
>
> Shaun
>
> On 13 Jun 2009, at 02:27, SteveC wrote:
>
>> So there are bits and pieces on traffic lights on the wiki
>>
>> 	http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relations/Proposed/Traffic_Lights
>> 	http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dtraffic_signals
>> 	http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/Set_of_Traffic_Signals
>>
>> but seems to have gone quiet especially on the question of modelling
>> traffic lights across big junctions. I'm interested because all the
>> lights near me span 4 or more intersecting ways. I'm in the relation
>> camp on how we should model that rather than the way joining it all  
>> up
>> with amenity:traffic_signals on it. Anyone interested in taking
>> charge?
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Steve
>>
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>
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