If a cycleway is the crossing way, the crossing is a bicycle crossing.
The cycleway is implicitly bicycle=designated, so this crossing is implicitly bicycle=designated.
If the crossing way is a footway, the crossing is a pedestrian crossing. The footway is implicitly foot=designated, so this crossing is implicitly foot=designated.
If the crossing way is mapped as a highway=path, you have no designation, so explicit foot=designated|yes or bicycle=designated|yes (or both) on the node can carry the information.
If it’s different from these standard situations in reality, you can tag the exception(s).
So, the short answer is foot=designated and/or bicycle=designated on the node. Others use the yes values, but IMO that says “allowed”, and you appear to be looking for designation.
E.g. a foot crossing is foot=designated; if bicycles are allowed to use it add bicycle=yes; if bicycles are allowed but not on the bike, add bicycle=dismount.
Markings: if necessary add crossing:markings=…
If in your country the markings determine the designation of the crossing, don’t count on any data consumer knowing that. Tag both designation (if not clear from the crossing way) and markings.
I think using *=designated is a good idea, but there doesn’t seem to be an established understanding of that as the way to achieve this. And from this thread so far, no other established way has been uncovered either…
Perhaps this requires a proposal, but I am curious as to how all the cycle crossings are tagged.
If there isn’t a tagging that is currently understood by data consumers, then what would be the point of such a proposal? I can understand tagging crossing nodes for older routing engines that don’t look at the crossing ways, but if changes need to be made anyhow, then why not do it correctly?
I’m genuinely interested, do you have a specific example of where it could be useful?
You probably meant something different from what I am reading, because as I understand it the single most important part of a proposal is to get some sort of consensus on way we tag things – especially in the face of there not being a way.
I think we’ve covered this earlier in the thread, but looking at the crossing ways doesn’t achieve the same thing.
I’m not looking for a method to state “this crossing connects a cycleway on both (or either) sides”.
Frankly, I don’t give a flying f*** about the node, so I’m not particularly interested in spending time arguing the case of the people I am merely trying to respect.
@balchen , I don’t know if I’m the only one, but frankly I’ve been reading this thread and I have no idea what you’re trying to tag and how and why. You’re asking about a cycle crossing, vaguely saying that they’re different from pedestrian crossings, insisting it’s insufficient to have two ways crossing, referring to legal classifications but not explaining them, and 28 posts into a thread you haven’t posted a single example of the kind of crossing you’re trying to tag: photo, or aerial image, or a law or regulation that we could try to machine-translate.
We’re not mind readers here.
It might simply be that your jurisdiction’s legal classification of “cycle crossings” has not come up in OSM before. Maybe you’ll create a crossing_ref=NO_bicycle_crossing or whatever tag. But it’s hard to tell when you haven’t shown what the legal classification is.
A cycle crossing is (like @SekeRob and @Peter_Elderson has aptly defined) a crossing designated for cyclists. A cycle crossing typically has different rules from an unmarked crossing – this is probably a major reason that they exist in the first place.
In Norway (sykkelkryssing) and Sweden (cykelöverfart), a cycle crossing gives cyclists on the crossing right of way, whereas cyclists by default not have right of way when crossing. Sweden also has cykelpassage, which is a marked cycle crossing that does NOT give cyclists right of way.
Here’s how they are illustrated in the Norwegian road design guide compared to an unmarked crossing:
Whenever there is a highway=crossing, it seems the assumption is it’s a pedestrian crossing, and we can further specify what kind (and what rules) with more tags.
I haven’t found a way to tag a cycle crossing explicitly.
Like I’ve illustrated, the type of way that enters the crossing is of absolutely no value in determining what type of crossing we’re looking at.
And further as for the why:
I map crossings as segments. For the crossing segment, I can tag highway=cycleway + cycleway=crossing or highway=footway + footway=crossing and I know what type it is explicitly.
I don’t care about the junction nodes, but some people do, so out of respect for them I also tag the node when I map a crossing segment. However, I can’t tag the node to be a cycle crossing with the tags I know!
Apart from crossing:markings=zebra, which implies a pedestrian crossing, the only way to tell whether the cycle crossing has priority is to see whether the cars have to yield, is that correct?
In some cases, yielding is signposted, is other cases there seems to be a checkerboard pattern in lieu of a stop line.
priority=* is already used for chokepoints with a different meaning. However, in combination with above, I checked out Key:priority_road - OpenStreetMap Wiki. Relatedly, there doesn’t seem to be established tagging for traffic_sign=DE:301:
Yes, that’s correct. Thinking about it, the only way to determine that is to check for highway=give_way nodes on the carriageway. We could try to make it a bit easier to parse with a tag like priority_crossing=yes_unposted, similar to priority_road=yes_unposted. This would naturally apply to both pedestrians and cyclists. What do you think?
My reasoning for putting tags on crossing nodes is that it was once the standard way to do and as such many older routing engines don’t check the crossing way. In that regard, it makes sense to tag those they are looking for as an ATYL, but it doesn’t do much to formalise new ones as the routers that it would affect won’t change their behaviour and new or maintained ones should implement the proper checking.
At least that’s my rationale.
The yielding is marked separately by the triangles and the yield signs. Naturally, they co-occur, BUT there is a HUGE caveat.
There are literally thousands of yield signs and/or triangles at cycleways with no cycle crossing. This is because the yield signs and triangles (self-evidently, according to the road authority) apply to the next REAL road (aka carriageway for cars), not the cycleway.
So immediately this torpedos the not unreasonable idea that looking for yield signs on the crossing carriageway will allow us to detect a cycle crossing. Now we have to apply heuristics like “well, there’s only ONE yield sign, and there’s a junction with another carriageway less than 15 meters away, so…”.
Or you depend on mappers being able to tag the cycle crossing yield sign as a cycle crossing yield sign, and if you did that, why not tag the cycle crossing instead.
The checkerboard markings indicate a traffic calming table. The non-checkerboard dots indicate a cycle crossing.
Honestly, I can’t wrap my head around it. Would that be tagged on the crossing segment and the junction node?
For pedestrian crossings, we seem to infer that they are priority crossings if they’re marked, and non-priority crossings if they’re unmarked. Am I right?
Ah. Well, that’s something I know very little about, but the wiki seems to disagree with you. It may be outdated. Maybe @Richard can contribute router expertise once again.
(Highlighting by me)
Exactly, which leads us to the suggestion
I’d say both. In the case of the crossing segment, it would be similar to priority_road, i.e. if I’m using the crossing, I have priority and others have to yield.
In the case of the junction node, it would mean that those on the crossing (or intending to use it) have priority.
Basically, yes. I guess you could still make it explicit if you wanted to.
The road they aprroching, a road include the verge, cycleway, the carriagway, and also footway. If it is allowed to ride a bike on the footway (sidewalk). I suppose the bike has priotity.
So the problem with that is that there are marked cycle crossings where the cyclists do not have priority (ref Sweden and UK). They are still cycle crossings (not for pedestrians).
Finnish wiki has a work-in-progress page about tagging footways and cycleways in Finland. Link to the relevant part, top row with the traffic sign that looks similar to the Norwegian road design guide. That sign basically means “yield for cycle crossing”.
I’m guessing the suggested tags are understandable, but I can translate if necessary. (Note that this particular part of the suggested tagging has not undergone significant discussion.)
