Or how about crossing=continuous? This works for both footways and cycleways, and it emphasises the most important attribute of this kind of crossing. (My hope is that if you see the term in a drop-down menu in iD, it’s more self explanatory than sidepath.)
1 Like
To me this suggests some kind of analogy with priority_road=yes_unposted. The only reason we’ve been dwelling on the presence of continuous pavement is that this is how priority is often communicated in certain countries. Yet my last example shows that a cycleway can have priority despite a discontinuous pavement. Fortunately, in this particular case, highway=stop on the roadway and highway=priority on the intersection get the point across without requiring new tagging. Can we rely on that to be the case?
The thread @Nadjita was summarising was of course about the situation in the Netherlands. It may well be the case that the primary purpose of this design in the Netherlands, Germany and other countries is to convey pedestrian priority. This is not its purpose in the UK, because pedestrians have priority anyway. The design merely visually reinforces the pedestrian priority.
Therefore we can’t rely on tags about priority alone.
I’m dwelling on the presence of continuous pavement because that’s what’s visible on the ground. It’s easy to define and easy to distinguish visually from other crossing types. (Here’s a typical example, here’s an extreme one.) It’s important to map because when this design is used for relatively busy roads, it can lead to conflict (example). Routers might want to take it into account in routing decisions or in announcements, detail-oriented renderers might want to render it differently, it could be interesting to compare how often this design has been used in different cities…
1 Like
It sounds like we might have a tag that works for everyone then? Or can anyone think of a reason we shouldn’t go with crossing=continuous?
And would it be useful to have a formal proposal? Or just go ahead and start using the tag?
1 Like
My personal favourite is crossing=sidepath, but maybe we just put them up for vote?
1 Like
The existing values of crossing= have attempted to encode if the crossing is signalized or not, if it is marked or not, and various region specific implications of each. I’d recommend against further overloading this key with another attribute (whether the crossing path is continuous or not). On the other hand perhaps the addition of crossing=continuous or crossing=continuous_path would further increase adoption of crossing:markings= and crossing:signals= to explicitly tag these attributes on continuous path crossings.
I’d suggest a new key using the crossing: namespace. Perhaps focusing on tagging which of the two intersecting ways is continuous. Something like crossing:continuity={highway class} or crossing:continuous_way={highway class}. So at a crossing between a highway=footway and a highway=tertiary you could tag crossing:continuous_way=footway to indicate that the footway is continuous across the tertiary road. For a cycleway & residential street crossing where the cycleway is continuous: crossing:continuous_way=cycleway. A schema like this would be flexible enough to handle a continuous cycleway crossing a footway without ambiguity about which one is the sidepath/sidewalk. It could also specify that a highway=pedestrian is continuous across a highway=tertiary (crossing:continuous_way=pedestrian) or vice versa (crossing:continuous_way=tertiary).
If this level of flexibility doesn’t seem necessary, there could just be two values: one for “paths” (footway, cycleway, path) and another for streets/roads (residential, unclassified, tertiary, pedestrian, etc). crossing:continuous_way=path would state that a highway=footway is continuous across a highway=unclassified. crossing:continuous_way=street would explicitly state that a highway=tertiary is continuous across a highway=cycleway but this would be the assumed default and not necessary to tag.
** After writing this I’m realizing this idea could apply to any junction between two highway= ways whether is considered a crossing or not. So it could make sense for the key to use a highway: namespace instead.
1 Like
I see - that wouldn’t just apply to sidewalks, but address a more general question, like in your earlier example where a pedestrian street continues uninterrupted across a junction with a road.
I’m worried that making it too general would raise more questions. For example, if this is to be used for all junctions, we’d need to discuss how to tag a situation where both roads are continuous (e.g. an unmarked junction of two country lanes), or how to unambiguously specify which of two roads are continuous when both are, for example, tertiary. And a tagging scheme that’s too complicated could hinder widespread adoption.
Could your suggestion be further simplified to crossing:continuous=yes? With yes meaning that the “lesser” way is continuous and no meaning that it isn’t (the implicit default).
I like the idea of a poll by the way - we’ll have to make a decision somehow.
I could see this working well. In many (most?) cases it is probably fairly clear which way is “lesser”. As with many other yes value tags, a more specific value could be used in cases where the “lesser” way is not clear.
I’d say that for most junctions this would not be useful or necessary. I was only thinking that there might be some junctions where it could be useful in which case a more general take might make sense. I take your point that a more general tag could be less clear though. The question of which way the continuous attribute applies to when two of the same classification intersect is worth considering though. Perhaps there might be an intersection between two cycleways, each with a different surface treatment, and where one is clearly continuous through the intersection while the other is interrupted.
In an ideal world, one of the cycleways would have cycleway=crossing, and the other one wouldn’t. Same goes for the continuous sidewalks: The non-sidewalk street should have something like residential=crossing, but I don’t suppose anyone wants to form a proposal for this…
I’m not sure about this. My understanding is that we tag a crossing where two different types of traffic cross and turning from one way to the other is generally not allowed or not possible. A car can’t (or at least shouldn’t!) turn off a road onto a footway that crosses it, for example. In general, where two cycleways intersect I’d expect cyclists could turn off of one and onto the other (or continue straight), just as cars generally can at a basic intersection between two residential streets. So I wouldn’t tag such an intersection as a crossing.
But a bicycle can turn into the road that is being crossed. It’s actually very common. Up until recently, highway=crossing was solely defined as pedestrian crossing. My understanding has always been that both, footway=crossing + cycleway=crossing carry the meaning “it’s a footway/cycleway, but it’s currently crossing another way, so generally be more careful”, which is exactly what a car crossing a continuous sidewalk should do, right?
If you’re referring to this change of mine last year, note that, since at least 2016, the article had already implied that highway=crossing is also used at cyclist and equestrian crossings. It just didn’t say so at the top, probably because of an assumption that referring to pedestrian crossings was good enough to get the point across, especially given the other articles devoted to tagging other kinds of crossings. But I made the change because someone might have come away confused by a more legalistic reading of the definition.
Additionally, I vaguely recall that there’s a country in Europe where cycleway–road crossings typically aren’t tagged highway=crossing, because cyclists don’t necessarily yield to cars. But I may be misremembering.
In Germany, we usually don’t do this, because if the cycleway is a sidepath of a road, then the same rules apply as if you were driving on that road. Not sure if that’s what you mean, but you only need to let cyclists pass if the cars on the street had priority as well.
And yes, I was referring to that change. AFAIK, it was only mentioned that if horses and bicycles are also allowed to cross at this crossing, add bicycle=yes and horse=yes. But always in addition to pedestrians. But maybe it’s too late now to figure out how things came to be.
This change in 2016 formally introduced language about highway=cycleway ways leading away from highway=crossing nodes. Even today, the article doesn’t say it’s required, but editor validators and navigation applications often assume that it is, since the highway=cycleway cycleway=crossing way isn’t necessarily present in the routing graph or understood by a car-centric router. On the bright side, it seems to make the proposal here possible.
No, it’s about cycleway=crossing-ways and these can be on combines foot/cycleways. But let’s stop nitpicking, it doesn’t change this proposal.
if the cycleway is a sidepath of a road, then the same rules apply as if you were driving on that road
for sidepaths this depends on the layout (position of traffic lights / road markings / sidewalk and cycleway)
Good point. The cars in the road can’t turn onto the cycleway though so I still see it as a different situation than a two cycleway intersection where bicycles are free to move from one way to the other. I guess I should rephrase my crossing description from this:
where two different types of traffic cross and turning from one way to the other is generally not allowed or not possible.
To something like this:
where two different types of traffic cross and either one or both of the traffic types may not turn onto the intersecting way.
So a street where HGV are allowed turning into a street where they are forbidden would be a highway=crossing 
? Or any street turning into one where cyclists are forbidden?
Seriously, if they are allowed to turn into each other or not, can be derived from the access-tags and the highway=*-value. The only reason highway=crossing existed in the first place was, because we didn’t have separately mapped sidewalks and people wanted to add crossings. Which is why its original meaning was “place where pedestrians can cross”, and then people added tags to additionally allow bicycles and horses to cross. The essential definition was “Pedestrians can cross a street here”
The reason for footway=crossing was that because you were crossing the street, you were no longer on the sidewalk, so footway=sidewalk would be kinda misleading. From this logic, a street crossing a sidewalk would also mean that you are no longer on the street, but on the sidewalk. A tag like residential=crossing might be useful or not - who knows. I’m just saying that it might make sense to add it, mirroring the meaning of footway=crossing and cycleway=crossing 
And I’m getting that you’re saying that for you, it doesn’t make sense 
Friends?
1 Like
What I meant was: if you are on a crossing with a street that has an accompanying cycleway, then crossing this cycleway is treated the same as crossing the road itself, because they present a unit. From a “who has the right of way” perspective that is.
yes, I understood, this is why I wrote it depends on the local situation, as the “accompanying cycleway” is independent from the street, it can have different signage / right of way, although this is rare in Germany, it could still happen also there (e.g. by putting yield signs on the cycleway, or letting the cycleway pass right of a traffic light).