How to map highway=crossing on T-junctions?

Help and support
1

I have the following situation: A T-junction with three lowered kerbs to cross the road. When crossing from/to the northern lowerd kerb, the street must not be crossed at a right angle but diagonally. The last part is an important information for visually impaired users.

At the moment sidewalks are implicitly mapped via the sidewalk=* tag (visible in the screenshot as a green road casing).

I struggle to place the highway=crossing nodes since there are multiple possibilities and I don’t like any of them.

Possibility 1: Keep the implicitly mapped sidewalk, duplicate the northern lowerd kerb to the west and east of the junction node

josm_02
josm_02418Ă—345 19 KB

Advantages:

  • Simple

Disadvantages:

  • Duplicated crossing for the nothern kerb
  • No indication that the northern lowerd kerb must be used diagonally instead of orthogonally (maybe an additional tag like direction could be used to indicate this)

Possibility 2: Map sidewalks explicitly, use the junction node as crossing node

josm_sidewalk_explicit
josm_sidewalk_explicit418Ă—345 32.4 KB

Advantages:

  • Clear indication that the northern lowerd kerb must be used diagonally instead of orthogonally

Disadvantages:

  • Complexity due to separately mapped sidewalks
  • Crossing the south-east and south-west kerbs now has the wrong geometry

Possibility 3: Map sidewalks explicitly, use the junction node as crossing node and a separate crossing for the south-east/south-west kerbs

josm_sidewalk_explicit_double
josm_sidewalk_explicit_double418Ă—345 36.6 KB

Advantages:

  • Correct geometries for all crossing possibilities

Disadvantages:

  • Even more complexity

Any advice how to map these situations? Ideally without having to map sidewalks explicitly for all of these situations.

1 Like
2

There is also possibility 4: Map sidewalks explicitly and also map the curbs as explicit ways.

Advantages: Router could figure out optimal path automatically

Disadvantages: Round about the most complex way of dealing with this

If you don’t want to map sidewalks, just tag the node where the two streets meet as a crossing. kerb=lowered indicates that there are lowered kerbs.
Any more detail requires separately mapped sidewalks.

1 Like
3

For what it’s worth, when I go through the trouble of mapping out the sidewalks and crosswalks as ways, I have the crosswalks form a triangle extending from curb to curb, so the highway=crossing nodes are next to the node where the streets intersect. The street intersection node can still be tagged highway=stop stop=all if it’s an all-way stop.

Dunlap Court and Prostaff Court intersect Crooked Tree Drive at a T. The crosswalks at Dunlap form an L while the crosswalks at Prostaff form a triangle. Neither intersection’s crosswalk ways cross the node that forms the street intersection.
Dunlap Court and Prostaff Court intersect Crooked Tree Drive at a T. The crosswalks at Dunlap form an L while the crosswalks at Prostaff form a triangle. Neither intersection’s crosswalk ways cross the node that forms the street intersection.3456×1824 1.17 MB

From the pedestrian’s point of view, they reach a fork as they enter the street, not once they get to the middle of the intersection. I only connect crosswalks to the street intersection node in the case of a pedestrian scramble, where the pedestrian is literally going through the middle of the intersection because the crosswalks form an X.

3 Likes