In some cities in Nederland, control cycles of traffic lights at complex intersections can have an all bicycles phase. Looks like it’s a trend, and there are experiments going on in other countries as well.
It resembles the all-pedestrian phase, colloquially known as pedestrian scramble. I encountered pedestrian_scramble somewhere on the OSM wiki, can’t rememer where though. Bicycle scramble seems like a nice analogy.
Advisory lanes may be present for straight-on bicycle traffic, but other than that it’s just “take the shortest route to your target”, and use common sense and courtesy to avoid crashes. Surprisingly, it works!
There is a traffic sign warning cyclists of this “all bicycles go” phase.
I want to tag this somehow. The solution I have come up with is: tag bicycle_scramble=yes on the traffic_light nodes controlling the flow of cyclists on to the intersection.
Aquí en México, recuerdo hace mucho tiempo (cuando la bicicleta era un medio de transporte. Ahora se considera de recreación), existían semáforos para cicilstas (y otros para peatones).
Pero con el tiempo, la ley de tránsito ha cambiado (como el aumento de vehículos y ciclistas). Y actualmente los semáforos (cuando no hay carril para bici) son el mismo para autos y ciclistas.
Para cuando hay secciones de carril compartido, el semáforo prende en verde una bicicleta, para dejar avanzar primero a los ciclistas; después se enciende el verde redondo para los automóviles. Pero no creo sea necesario poner una indicación en los “highway=traffic_signals” para ciclistas.
(aunque hay algo relacionado en la Wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dtraffic_signals
Y para cuando hay un carril de bicis, pues un “highway=traffic_signals” es necesario para indicar un semáforo en la vía del carril de bicicletas.
I think this makes sense. The tag name is self-explanatory. It’s a nice analogy to pedestrian_scramble=yes. It’s clearly a property of the traffic_signals. There hasn’t yet been an agreed scheme for signal phasing so we won’t be messing that up. And if any data consumers want to start reading it, it seems to make sense to me.
(pedestrian_scramble has since been edited to crossing:scramble=yes on a few pedestrian scrambles I am aware of, but this doesn’t seem to apply cleanly to a bicycle scramble - traffic_signals:bicycle:scramble=yes doesn’t seem cleaner or better)
Thanks! This idea is for (for now) exceptional situations where cyclists have their own traffic lights, and where all the bicycle traffic lights on and around the intersection become green at the same time, while those for motorized vehicles are all red.
Of course there are many regular situations where bicycles and motorized vehicles are controlled by the same traffic lights. Giving cyclists first chance on green is usually done by allowing cyclists to gather on a road section in front of the cars. There is a separate tag for that, I think.
Scrambling brings up a couple of things to my mind as a native English speaker, and neither of them associate with crossing the road.
The first usage is rock climbing without ropes.
The other really is a long way from crossing the road and that is racing on dirt tracks. Mostly accociated with motor cycle racing but also exists using BMX bikes.
As for pedestrian scramble, it feels like a mad dash when the lights change and push people out of the way?