Pedestrian crossings not visible

[mxa]

Pedestrian crossings are currently not visible at all. I think that should be fixed. In the transport map style at least the walkways go over the street, that makes a lot of sense. The french style also could be an inspiration. I attached some more examples from OSM renderings and proprietary map providers for comparison.

Current carto

Naver Maps:

Daum Maps:

French style:

Transport layer

OsmAnd

Some more notes:

• I have not included google maps in the screen-shots because that is quite poor in South Korea
• You can also see another issue which lies as in the data, but also in the rendering of OSM: poor representation of subway stations, things that are very important to get around is to find the number of the exit. The name tag of railway:subway_entrance is not rendered in carto.

[nebulon42]

Related to #1318.

[matkoniecz]

From looking at fr map I am not convinced that it improves map.

It is not conveying any additional information beyond what is showed by mapped footways and cycleways and is misleading (the same style for marked pedestrian crossings, unmarked pedestrian crossings, footway+cyclist crossing, cyclist only crossings...).

Separate rendering for every single crossing style would be nigthmare.

The only potential benefit would be in areas where people are using sidewalk tag instead of mapping footways as separate objects what for me is not convincing (if anything, encouraging this style of tagging for me would be a negative effect).

And rendering only pedestrian crossings seems to be a poor idea (anyway, even pedestrian crossings have many variations).

[pnorman]

Looking at this, I think improving visibility of footpaths at z19 would help.

[mxa]

@matkoniecz actually in the french style there are different symbols for crossings with lights and without lights. Look closely. The ones with lights have a little guy walking over it. That said, I don't think it is necessary. Naver and Daum examples show that the pedestrian ways can be shown more clearly.

[mxa]

I think in most countries zebra crossings mean that cars need to stop for pedestrians. In OSM carto the footpath disappears under the road instead.

[drkludge]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 7:14 AM, Mateusz Konieczny [email protected]
wrote:

From looking at fr map I am not convinced that it improves map.

It is not conveying any additional information beyond what is showed by
mapped footways and cycleways and is misleading (the same style for marked
pedestrian crossings, unmarked pedestrian crossings, footway+cyclist
crossing, cyclist only crossings...).

Separate rendering for every single crossing style would be nigthmare.

Starting out simple would be a great start in an open source,"Release
early and release often", kind-of way.

bicycle=yes
crossing=traffic_signals
highway=crossing
...
I don't recall if you have to have bicycle=yes for the green dot.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2509393226#map=18/33.63222/-112.08229&layers=C

highway=crossing

or

highway=crossing
crossing=uncontrolled
will give you a yellow dot.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/33.62558/-112.08305&layers=C

On the one hand, I don't care if the crossings are rendered on the main
map. The two crossing nodes and the intersection node of the highways with
the traffic signals provides me with three nodes. I can lasso the nodes in
JOSM and hit the L key to straighten up an intersection. That technique
has been a great help during TIGER fix up.

On the other hand, I do care that the crossings are not rendered. I've had
some mappers come along and think that the nodes are clutter. The problem
is that they delete the node verses just the tags. Then my perfectly
aligned intersection is blown out of the water.

What you are missing when you say, "I am not convinced that it improves
map", is that without some sort of rendering for a feature, there's no
visual reward for a mapper to add the data. Imagine playing a video game
without some sort of reward. There would be no reason to pickup the game
to start with.

[dieterdreist]

sent from a phone

Am 04.11.2015 um 03:54 schrieb mxa [email protected]:

I think in most countries zebra crossings mean that cars need to stop for pedestrians. In OSM carto the footpath disappears under the road instead

it might depend on the presence of vertical zebra crossing signs

[mxa]

Updated the screenshots to include Transport layer and OsmAnd rendering.

[DaveF63]

I'd like to +1 the rendering of these crossings. Not only to improve the map (IMO), but to prevent incorrect tagging for the renderer. This combination is being used to force a display of the traffic light icon no matter what type of crossing it is.:
highway=traffic_signals
crossing=*

I disagree with @matkoniecz's points - often crossings are just nodes on a highway & have no associated foot/cycle paths to indicated there are specified crossing points.

Rendering for all types might be a 'nightmare' but icons for the three most popular tags would cover almost 90% of them. They wouldn't overlap with any other rendered items.

[mxa]

Pedestrian crosswalks are important nodes for reference and for (pedestrian) navigation. Carto should show them. Here is a Maproulette challenge about crosswalks http://geometalab.tumblr.com/post/135791594387/missing-crosswalks-a-maproulette-challenge

[kocio-pl]

I guess at z19 it would not be too obtrusive.

[mxa]

You can also look at this issue from a more political point of view: Most commercial maps are centred around cars. OSM is a notable exception, because many contributors are cyclists and pedestrians. When a road and a footway cross and there is a zebra crossing, cars will have to stop for pedestrians. The current rendering makes it look like the the pedestrian path is disappearing under the road instead. Make a rendering for humans, not for cars!

[polarbearing]

The current rendering makes it look like the the pedestrian path is disappearing under the road instead.

No, it is the the less significant way joining the higher category, otherwise the painting of the higher roads would be constantly interrupted by lower ones. This mostly coincides with the traffic on the higher category having priority over the lower.

Consequently, where this priority is inverted and the pedestrian is given higher priority, those crossings might get rendered (but only those, and in particular not crossing=unmarked), however we then run into the problem that there are too many types to distinguish, as @matkoniecz pointed out earlier.

[mxa]

1. your point of view is rather biased/partial. For a pedestrian, a walkway is more significant than a road.
2. Look at the screenshot of carto. Residential roads are on top of the "higher" trunk link road.
3. On a zebra crosswalk pedestrian traffic always has priority, even if some car drivers keep forgetting that. The map should make this visible.
4. Look at the screenshots again. Carto is the only map where it looks like the street can't be crossed because the footpath stops on either side of it.

[polarbearing]

your point of view is rather biased/partial. For a pedestrian, a walkway is more significant than a road.

No it's just systematic. You forget that the pedestrian also uses the primary road, in particular if it has a sideway.

Look at the screenshot of carto. Residential roads are on top of the "higher" trunk link road.

No. The examples you see in the top post screeshots are residentials joining a trunk_link, which is intentional (#1985), and not a trunk, where they would end.

On a zebra crosswalk pedestrian traffic always has priority, even if some car drivers keep forgetting that. The map should make this visible.

This map style is not for reminding a particular user group. Though, I am not against rendering zebra crossings, if the related problems can be sorted.

Look at the screenshots again. Carto is the only map where it looks like the street can't be crossed because the footpath stops on either side of it.

The advantage in OSM is that you can have lots of different styles for different purposes, highlighting different aspects of the world.

[talllguy]

I like the French style, if this is still under consideration.

[mxa]

@talllguy a special rendering on openstreetmap.fr isn't available any more as far as I can see. The contrast could be a bit better, it's hard to see.

[talllguy]

@mxa If the small hashed zebra crossing could have its contrast increased, that French style would be nice. On those particular ones, the footway is too narrow.

[ElminsterAU]

For what it's worth, at a minimum I would like to see a way that is tagged highway=footway|cycleway|path footway|cycleway|path=crossing being rendered on top of "higher" ways (even for crossing=unmarked, and independent of the presence of highway=crossing on the intersection node).

This would keep existing rendering for paths that join a higher way (with the path rendering ending at the outer line of the road) while ensuring that actual crossings are clearly visible as such.

For highway=crossing nodes they should be rendered based on the crossing= tag as:
traffic_signals - a traffic light
uncontrolled, zebra - symbol with zebra road markings
(anything else or absence of crossing=* tag) - a walking person (can be omitted IF that node is also part of a way tagged with footway|cycleway|path=crossing which is already being rendered on top of the road)

I would think this is useful information for drivers of vehicles, even in the case of crossing=unmarked as it gives feedback that this is a place where people (or bikes) might cross more often and some caution might be advisable. The current rendering doesn't give that impression at all.

To improve on this minimum:

For footway|cycleway|path=crossing + crossing=uncontrolled, zebra, or traffic_signals, render the way itself more prominently to look like zebra markings. In this case for the highway=crossing node if it is uncontrolled or zebra, the symbol does not need to be rendered (but should still be rendered for traffic_signals).

Base on taginfo, with a very limited set of explicitly recognized tags, this would cover at least 97% of all currently tagged crossings adequately.

[SomeoneElseOSM]

If any of the proposers of suggested changes above want any technical help actually making the style changes required just ask - I'd be happy to help them figure out what needs to change and I'm sure many other people would too.

[kocio-pl]

I still support making them visible, but the details need to be decided (like in a proposition above) and someone has to prepare PR than. Does anybody want to take care of implementing it?

[ghost]

Please add this, is very important...

[kocio-pl]

Would you try to prepare the code?

[JLZIMMERMANN]

In french tile the crossing are already shown at Z19, I think it's a good starting point ;-)

[mxa]

In french tile the crossing are already shown at Z19, I think it's a good starting point ;-)

Looks like they changed the rendering for a crossing with a traffic light compared to my older screen shot from 2015.

[JLZIMMERMANN]

And what I like very much, at Z20 the bollards that are next to the kerb to protect the pedestrian are shown.

Like the picture bellow

[imagico]

Note the difficulty here is integrating the rendering of crossings in the road layering stack. The french style does not do that, it just renders the crossings collectively after the road layers. See here:

https://tile.openstreetmap.fr/?zoom=19&lat=45.75062&lon=4.82334&layers=B00000000FFFFFF
https://tile.openstreetmap.fr/?zoom=19&lat=43.31253&lon=5.36674&layers=B00000000FFFFFF

[DaveF63]

Could you expand on the meaning of "road layering stack." and why OSM-Carto can't do it the French way?

[imagico]

Could you expand on the meaning of "road layering stack."

The road layering system of OSM-Carto is explained in http://blog.imagico.de/navigating-the-maze-part-1/.

and why OSM-Carto can't do it the French way?

We could, but it would not be very good map design as the samples linked to show.

Evidently the crossings should be drawn directly after the road lines they belong to and before any other road lines drawn on top. This is possible, but would require either using functions/views or to duplicate the code for generating the crossings in the different road layers.

[jidanni]

Where can people cross the street?
Ah, found it.
Even car owners would benefit from seeing them on the map better.