As an example, several other sites summarizing bike laws in Ontario gave me the impression that riding a bike in a non-PXO crossing is legal so long as it isn’t at an intersection, so, e.g., staying on your bike when crossing streets from a bike path mid-block would be legal unless marked otherwise. According to the actual text of the law though, if a crossing is marked on the ground in any way, it’s legally considered an intersection, so bicycles technically can’t legally ride in it (unless it’s got paint or signage indicating it’s a cycle crossing, of course). I know a lot of the multi-use paths around here in Waterloo region have painted crossings and aren’t designated for bicycles, even though the path itself is, but I’ve never seen anyone dismount or get ticketed for failing to do so—many of the paths would be nigh unusable if that were enforced. On the flip side, I was also unaware that the law was changed in 2015 to specifically allow riding just outside the markings of the crossing, even at signalized intersections.
What do we want to do to clarify this status for routing engines? The options I see are:
Tag marked pedestrian crossings as bicycle=no/dismount, since they’re technically not allowed to ride in them. This seems counterproductive, since it ruins routing connectivity when all a cyclist needs to do is ride a few feet over.
Tag de facto rules instead of de jure. If bicyclists ride in a crossing without issue, tag it as bicycle=yes until there’s a reason to change this. I’m not a huge fan of this, since a mapping mistake would be pretty annoying for a cyclist user who finds it the hard way, and it makes armchair mapping impossible—though, it would function as a stopgap.
Expect cyclists to know the Ontario road laws well enough to navigate them on their own, and tag nearly all crossings as bicycle=yes (or somehow notify routing engines that this is the default in Ontario), with the assumption cyclists know to ride outside the lines. This could work, and is how somewhat similar issues like “right turn on red” that vary by jurisdiction are already handled, but it’s unfortunate since I expect most occasional cyclists don’t know this nuance, especially if visiting from out of town, and could be mislead by a navigation app telling them to carry on through without caveat.
Invent some new access tag value that indicates “access is the equivalent of *=yes just outside the way”. This would be a pain because until we get sufficient community buy-in, it’d be a non-standard tag most routing engines wouldn’t know to use.
Map an unmarked cycle crossing next to every marked pedestrian crossing. This sounds awful and confusing.
None of these options seem especially great to me, so I’m open to other suggestions.
Please give us a link of a crossing you’re in dubio on. If the crossing would be bicycle=yes as de facto, you also need to add segregated=yes/no tag to indicate if separate or shared.
Since a year or so all crossings where a street is tagged with a cycleway:side=lane, being a paint on, have added dotted lines and red paint to highlight to motorists that they’re about to cross path with straight going traffic, so it would be bicycle=yes.
(Right on red is scary… fortunately we have not got that here, most seem anyhow blind to bicycles… as if they’re not there… not a threat to them in their faraday cage, let alone indicating they’re going to turn right, you got to be kidding, so having eyes in back of head is a recommended feature for bicycle road participants)
It is tagged as highway=cycleway + bicycle=designated + foot=designated + cycleway=crossing. This seems clear to me: as far as I understand, Iron Horse Trail is a MUP so both foot and bicycle are designated, and it has a significant amount of bicycle riders and is designated to cater to them, so highway=cycleway makes sense.
So is dismounting is actually legally required here?
If yes, is it actually enforced? Through signs, or through law enforcement officers?
If it is the case that legally you’re supposed to dismount but it’s never enforced and in fact it’s designed to be ridden through, I wouldn’t bother with the legal aspect personally - there are a lot of unrealistic traffic laws in Ontario unfortunately (e.g. isn’t it the case that technically there’s a crossing of a major street at every minor street intersection?).
If these pedestrian crossings are not particularly important to cycling network and not signed for bicycles in any way, I would just not tag bicycle at all.
This is about marked crossings in general. @Jarek: the example you posted should probably be yes, not designated, since that crossing has no indications it’s legal for bikes to cross there, but because there’s no paint on the ground and it’s not at an intersection, cyclists are allowed by default (here’s a designated crossing, visible in Bing imagery, which is more up-to-date in RoW; not that it matters, I’m not going to fix every designated/yes conflation). An example of what I’m talking about can technically be found at every signalized intersection, since cyclists can use those to cross especially wide roads and the like, but here’s a more unambiguous example: Way: Laurentian Trail (1075928390) | OpenStreetMap. This is a marked crossing on a MUP with no indication that it’s a cycle crossing. It’s therefore illegal to ride your bike in it. However, I doubt this is enforced in practice, but I don’t know that. If it is enforced, the solution is to ride your bike just outside the lines of the crossing. There is no way I know of to indicate that in existing tagging schemas.
Right, but we don’t need to tag these specifically for bicycle. People can ride horses on the street in Ontario, but we don’t tag every street horse=yes.
I still do think that we should tag actual situation as indicated by use, design, and enforcement, rather than obscure legal aspects, though I see the issues with that.
