Proposal:Deprecate crossing=zebra in favor of crossing:markings
| Deprecate crossing=zebra in favor of crossing:markings | |
|---|---|
| Proposal status: | Draft (under way) |
| Proposed by: | Bauer33333 |
| Tagging: | crossing=uncontrolled + crossing:markings=zebra |
| Statistics: |
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| Draft started: | 2024-05-30 |
Proposal
This proposal aims to replace crossing=zebra with the more popular combination of crossing=uncontrolled + crossing:markings=zebra
Rationale
crossing=zebra was originally intended to describe zebra crossings in the UK with their respective legal effects[1]. After iD added a preset for this tag it gained widespread usage, even in countries without a special zebra crossing type in their road rules. This gave the tag a second meaning by soley describing the type of markings. Since a lot of counries use striped markings on other types of crossings that have their own crossing values, like crossing=traffic_signals this kind of tagging creates ambiguity and conflicts between the tags. To solve this issue crossing_ref=zebra was introduced to describe the legal status independend of the crossing=* value. In a second step crossing:markings=zebra was introduced to describe the kind of markings independend of the crossing=* value. Therefore both meanings of crossing=zebra are now covered by other tags that describe the situation without introducing conflicts. So the crossing=zebra tag is obsolete now.
The new tags have been picked up by mappers and crossing=zebra has been basically abandoned six years ago:
As you see the just about one and half a year old crossing:markings=zebra has already about twice the uses of the ten year old crossing=zebra with no intend visible of slowing down. Meanwhile crossing=zebra has seen almost no growth in recent years. In regions without a lot of casual mappers the amount seems to even decrease, what is an indicator for mostly new mappers picking that tag, since it seems to describe the situation better at a first glance if you don't see the conflicts.
With three diferent tags for a "zebra" some (most?) data users internally replace them all with just one, so getting rid of one would also make that process less complicated and less error prone.
Tagging
The offered replacement tagging would be crossing=uncontrolled + crossing:markings=zebra. With crossing=zebra always describing the kind of markings, and only sometimes the legal status, adding crossing_ref=zebra to every single crossing=zebra would be wrong. This tag can be added manuallly in regions where it applies on top of the other two tags.
Instead of crossing=uncontrolled crossing=marked could be used instead, but the former has seen a lot more usage recently: https://taghistory.raifer.tech/?#***/crossing/uncontrolled&***/crossing/marked
The cases where the crossing values conflict have often seen multiple values separated by a semicolon and would need to be manually reviewed.
Examples
Here is an overpass turbo query to find crossings currently tagged in the proposed way: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1MfQ
Rendering
No changes proposed.
Features/Pages affected
Taginfo shows some users of this tag[1]
First one is iD, but the present there is already unsearchable. The tagging suggested here is already used for new crossings. Straßenraumkarte Neukölln uses all three zebra tags and converts them to one internally, so they won't see any effect. MapComplete, OSM2World and OSMAnd would need to be looked into, now idea how relevant it is to them.
Wiki pages affected:
External discussions
Comments
Please comment on the discussion page.