On Wed, 7 May 2008, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: > Heh. While in london someone tried to explain to me what was so > special about all these crossing types. They have names for crossings > that here in NL would "normal". A crossing with a separate light for > bikes, that's like every crossing in NL. All sorts of variations. I > don't think I've ever seen a crossing for horses, they just cross.
It seems to me that instead of referring to a crossing by name, we should just list its properties. e.g. comething like: highway=crossing crossing=uncontrolled|traffic_signals island=yes|no bicycle=yes|no foot=yes|no horse=yes|no That way you don't need to know about the specific types of crossing (which vary from region to region anyway) - the properties of the crossing are pretty obvious from just looking at the tags with no further knowledge needed. The various (UK specific) crossing names do give you further information such as whether the signal lights are on the near/far side of the road, whether it does anything to detect the presence of pedestrians on the crossing, etc. But if people think this level of detail is important, those sorts of properties can also be added as individual tags. For the record, the common crossings in the UK are: Toucan crossing (Two-Can): cyclists and cycle across at the same time as pedestrians walk across. The lights show both a "green bicycle" and a "green man" on the far side of the road, which is activated by a push-button with a time delay. Puffin crossing (Pedestrian User-Friendly INtelligent): pedestrians only (obviously cyclists are considered pedestrians if they are walking with their bike instead of cycling). The lights show a "green man" on the near side of the road, which is activated with a push-button with a time delay. These also detect the presence of the pedestrian so that the lights won't change if the pedestrian is nolonger there (e.g. the pedestrian crossed early). They detect the presence of a pedestrian on the crossing so they shouldn't turn green for the traffic while you are still crossing. Pelican crossing (PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled crossing): pedestrians only. The lights show a "green man" on the far side of the road, which is activated with a push-button with a time delay. Pretty-much the same as a Toucan crossing, but cyclists can't ride across it. Pegasus crossing: Like a pelican crossing, but for horse riders. They have two push-buttons at different heights so that horse riders can reach them easilly. Instead of a "green man" on the far side of the road, they have a "green horse". Zebra crossing: Pedestrians always have the right of way. (Wikipedia has some fairly good descriptions of these). - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk