Proposal:Aircraft crossing

Aircraft Crossing
Proposal status:	Approved (active)
Proposed by:	Diacritic
Tagging:	aeroway=aircraft_crossing Data item
Applies to:	node
Definition:	A point where the flow of traffic is impacted by crossing aircraft.
Statistics:
Rendered as:	The level crossing icon overlaid with a small airport icon.
Draft started:	2022-01-14
RFC start:	2022-01-21
Vote start:	2022-05-27
Vote end:	2022-06-10

Proposal

If endorsed, this proposal would:

• Introduce a new tag (aeroway=aircraft_crossing) for mapping a point where the flow of traffic is impacted by crossing aircraft.

Rationale

Aircraft crossings—while uncommon—are uniquely problematic for routing purposes. Highways that cross runways may be closed for a considerable length of time to facilitate the safe landing of an aircraft. The impact to routing can be highly variable due to aircraft movements, making the calculation of an average delay to routing harder to quantify in comparison to other crossings.

There are often unique restrictions placed upon vehicles crossing the highway (for security and safety purposes). They are most commonly controlled by boom gates, flashing lights, or airport/security staff, and all serve to prevent aircraft colliding with ground vehicles.

Why not alternatives?

level_crossing The railway=level_crossing, railway=crossing, and highway=crossing tags are well supported tags for facilitating crossing across a highway or a railway, but have been used in situations where any intersection takes place between the two ways.

Ground operations traffic routinely maneouvre on aeroways, and tagging each point where these vehicles access these ways would no be productive. Using a different tag value adds clarity to consumers that these crossings are distinct concepts.

Traffic signals tagging

Another alternative tagging scheme would be to indicate the nature of the crossing on the traffic_signals node. This would be unsuitable as:

• Not all aircraft crossings are facilitated through traffic signals. Many crossings (particularly in remote locations) do not have any signage a
• It would be incompatible where an intersection where the traffic signals control multiple highways in addition to the aeroway and vehicles do not necessarily need to cross the aeroway.
• With no distinction between these traffic lights and the other lights, this prevents routing engines from adding particular weighting to these unique crossings.

Tagging

The tag is applied to a node on a suitable ground-based way in two situations:

Intersection of ground way and aeroway

Where a ground way and aeroway intersect, the tag should be added to a node that is shared by both the highway=*, railway=* (or similar), and an aeroway=taxiway, aeroway=runway, (or similarly trafficable aeroway feature).

On a ground way only

Where there is no suitable aeroway feature to share the node (for example, roads passing under an unmapped flight path), the tag should be to the highway=*, railway=* (or similar) at the approximate point where aircraft would "cross" the way.

Ground Control traffic

Ground operations traffic maneouvres on aeroways as a routine component of their regular duties. These vehicle movements are often coordinated via radio and traffic controllers, and tagging each point where these vehicles may interact with an aeroway would be unproductive. This tag should only be applied to ways which can be used by traffic other than routine ground operations.

Tags

Tag	Comment
aeroway=aircraft_crossing	A point where the movement of traffic not actively providing ground support may be impacted by the movement of an aircraft.

Optional, supplementary Tags

The relative position of the aircraft to ground traffic can nearly always be deduced by the connecting ways on the node. (ie: intersecting node=ground/node on ground-based way=overhead)

In some very rare cases it may be required to clarify the exact interaction between the aircraft and the ground-based way.

Tag	Possible Values	Comment
crossing:aircraft=*	ground	(default) Aircraft crosses way while on the ground
	overhead	Aircraft crosses way while airborne overhead at a low altitude
	exclusion_only	Aircraft does not directly cross the way, but the way is not navigable due to its movement nearby (ie, jet wash/unsafe clearance)

Related Tags

Existing tags could be used to indicate the nature of the crossing, for example:

• crossing:barrier=* to indicate the type of gates
• crossing:bell=yes/no if an acoustic warning is provided
• crossing:light=yes/no to add information about lights

Examples

Use Cases

Winston Churchill Avenue crossing Gibraltar Airport runway	The A970 crossing the displaced threshhold of Sumburgh Airport runway 09/27.	Gisborne Airport runway 14/32 crossing railway Gisborne Airport runway 14/32 crossing railway	Road crossing runway at Tuvalu Airport
On shared node between road and runway aeroway=aircraft_crossing On shared node between sidewalk/runway aeroway=aircraft_crossing crossing:barrier=full crossing:light=yes/no	On shared node between highway/runway aeroway=aircraft_crossing	On shared node between railway/runway railway=level_crossing aeroway=aircraft_crossing	On shared node between road and runway aeroway=aircraft_crossing optional crossing:barrier=no supervised=yes

Non-Use Cases

A safety patrol car crossing a runway.

Service Road highway=service access=private Runway aeroway=runway

Proposed Rendering

The level crossing icon overlaid with a small airport icon (for example: )

Features/Pages affected

• aeroway=taxiway, aeroway=runway
• aeroway=aerodrome
• Aeroways
• hazard=low_flying_aircraft - similar, but distinct situation, where low-flying aircraft cause a distraction or jetwash hazard to passing motorists or pedestrians.

Comments

Please comment on the discussion page.

Voting

Voting closed

Voting on this proposal has been closed.

It was approved with 14 votes for, 0 votes against and 0 abstentions.

• I approve this proposal. As proposing contributor --Diacritic (talk) 00:02, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. This solves a longstanding problem of how to map such crossings --Timmy_Tesseract (talk) 00:44, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --clay_c (talk) 01:17, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Carnildo (talk) 04:16, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. I have been to one of these at Anchorage international, Alaska with the same kind of crossing sineage as a train track. IIRC it was tagged like a train crossing but this is much better (although some unified scheme with crossing=rail, aircraft, etc. might be preferable if it were possible). --Tysseract (talk) 04:18, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. Segubi (talk) 05:39, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. I see no problems here (and what I commented on was resolved with exclusion of internal service roads). Thanks for your work to design a good tagging scheme! I see no need for unified tagging scheme with railway crossings. --Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 07:31, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. A very sound and perfectly reasonable proposal. --Riiga (talk) 08:22, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --JeroenHoek (talk) 08:52, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. -- not a tag to break usage records, but I see nothing wrong with it. --Dieterdreist (talk) 13:11, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. I second Riiga's comment. --501ghost (talk) 13:17, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Dr Centerline (talk) 00:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --快乐的老鼠宝宝 (talk) 18:20, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --EneaSuper (talk) 12:01, 5 June 2022 (UTC)