tram_crossing and tram_level_crossing

[pch14@…]

Please make JOSM recognise the values tram_crossing and tram_level_crossing for key railway. The distinction sure is worth. The keys have some non-trivial usage numbers that are expected to grow, as the iD editor will make use of them sometime in the near future. As for visual representation, I have no idea, perhaps just the same as regular railway crossings?

[skyper]

Where is the proposal for this new tag changing established tagging?
What is the difference to established crossing and level_crossing?
Do we need an own tag for every transport vehicle on rails, now, instead of simply looking at the crossing way and its memberships? What should be used in cases of multiple vehicle types using the same rails?

[pch14@…]

Hello skyper, the proposal of course is in the OSM-Wiki, ​https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:railway%3Dtram_crossing. There are indeed reasons to have tram_crossing tagged explicitly - examining the railway line for tram is not enough, you never know how the crossing looks like on location, most often its just rails embedded in a paved road surface, nothing like a railway crossing; Sometimes it may appear quite a lot like a real railway crossing, eg. when, as you write, tram shares way with light rail. Then I expect mappers to choose the most adequate value. One more value only adds choice.

I stumbled upon this, as I was trying to figure out, why a certain pedestrian router (for blind people), that I happen to care about, took great detours. Turned out, that, unlike JOSM, the iD editor suggests to connect all ways crossing trams, which nowadays very often do not even have a shared node, and sure some users followed the advice and ended up with a railway=crossing. I complained in their forums, and a developer there found that tram_crossing tag and in the current version of this editor it is already in use.

As the number of such nodes is expected to grow, I'd consider it appropriate, if JOSM supports the value too, i.e. not render a blue dot, perhaps even have the value in the dropdown menu with the available values of the railway key. I explicitly do not endorse to flag any trams crossing highways or footways by the validator ;)

[skyper]

That is not a proposal but more or less a stub. The difference between crossing and tram_crossing is not sorted out. Unlike level_crossing, I do not see any advantage in this tag as crossing can already be all, from a crossing without any lights to almost a full crossing with barriers.

In general, if we really need a different primary tag, I'd prefer something like light_crossing or second_level_crossing or similar without a vehicle type.

How about using one or two new subtags instead of primary tags which could be added without changing the meaning of established tags and would be more precise as we could have one for the legal case and one for the architectural type of the crossing.

[pch14@…]

Hello skyper, I am not into inventing anything, its just about a value, which is partly autocreated by a widely used editor in their validation stage. All it would take were two new rules in elemstyles.xml - but well, if it is so controversial, so much for that.

[skyper]

Hi pch14, sorry, I never intended to get personal. Hope you did not perceive it that way.

Following your words, iD developers should know the answers to my questions as they support the tags.
They probably cannot tell you the numbers introduced (semi-)automatically. So I cannot look at the number of uses to tell if the tags are popular. How many of these tags were added with a different editor than iD?

As the tags were never proposed properly, despite the wiki pages stating that, I would go for deprecating it right, now, in favor of subtags.

[pch14@…]

Hello skyper, I see you took the discussion to the OSM Wiki, where it belongs. I added a little bit "pro" to the discussion.

Just for the record: The number now is 5155 for tram_level_crossing, and 5144 for tram_crossing. While waiting, we can see how iD validator suggestions impact the map ;)

[skyper]

monthly numbers til Jun 2020

[skyper]

monthly numbers til June 2020

[skyper]

We need the numbers from the first week of September. Only found them til June: 1621​ (level) and 2258​

[pch14@…]

​http://taghistory.raifer.tech/#node/railway/tram_level_crossing&node/railway/tram_crossing also has no recent data, 26 hours passed, taginfo numbers are 5169 for tram_level_crossing, and 5158 for tram_crossing, i.e. every other hour, one gets added. Resistence will be futile.

[pch14@…]

taghistory now has got the numbers. Indeed starting in September 2020, a sharp rise in usage can be seen.

[Don-vip]

Ticket #20511 has been marked as a duplicate of this ticket.

[Don-vip]

It's now a popular tag (>10k uses) but I agree with skyper: I don't see the need to this new tag, especially as it has not been proposed nor voted for... Going to ignore it for now.

[Don-vip]

In 17535/josm:

see #19982 - ignore railway=tram_crossing/tram_level_crossing

[aceman]

Correct, iD editor inventing its own unneeded tags and automatically converting valid tags into something of its own is nothing new.
It does not mean JOSM has to follow until the tags are properly voted upon and documented.

[pch14@…]

OSM-Carto received a wish on their issues tracker to render these, I cautioned them to consider twice, before doing that. Still, I think, an editor would do good to show, that it knows of them; for me no need for a preset to add them. A smaller and desaturated railway crossing icon might be adequate, the blue dot is just disturbing. Taginfo shows a steep increase and there are lots remaining to be marked. These tags were not invented by iD devs, they are not particularly new either, the documentation is sufficient, there are a number of tags that never got voted upon and enjoy full support.

[skyper]

Nice, OSM-Carto is not rendering railway=stop nor public_transport=platform or public_transport=stop_position but the crossing is important?

[pch14@…]

Hmm, the cynicism here makes me wonder, they received a wishlist item from a third party; where does it say, anybody considered this important? I just reread their issue 4296, I can confirm that the labelling there does not read "important".

PS: My reasoning there to not render this is based on the same grounds, that make me think, that quincy of iD did the right thing, when iD stopped semi-automatically marking tram crossings with railway=crossing ;)

[skyper]

Actually it is no cynicism, but criticism mixed with disappointment, which is a bad cocktail.

How about rendering railway=level_crossing with crossing:barrier=no, differently? I even use this subtag for railway=crossing.
crossing:light=* is another option, too, for different icons.

In my area, railway=crossing/level_crossing is used and we need z20 or z21 to get all rendered.

[pch14@…]

In my area, considerable effort is spent by the railway operator and the commune, to get rid of railway (level) crossings. There are very few anyway, but a single accident in 50 years will spark an initiative and create lots of bad press; for having to wait so long? At the same time, cyclists are advised to use the space between tram rails (the tram's track, so to say). There is already something brewing on the horizon, because the operator is hesitating to award thousands of Euros for damages when someone trips on those. Perhaps tram is too dangerous for cities and will vanish some time in the future.

PS: if listing tram_crossings as ignorable does away with the blue dot in the editor pane, I was fine.

[mkoniecz]

This tags are garbage data and not worth supporting, beyond ignoring them - many of them are not representing actual tram crossings.

See ​https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/5990#issuecomment-467876574 for examples where iD pushes tagging utterly invalid data.

[pch14@…]

What Mateusz alludes to might actually be a case for ​https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software_dispute_resolution_panel
iD is making the "crossing=*" tag worthless too with mechanical edits, see ​https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/8463
Yet, there are valid "railway=tram_crossings" (few though), and then it fits the truth much better than "railway=crossing".
BTW: If mapping sidewalks as separate ways, mapping carriage lanes as separate ways is not way off, sounds much the same to me.

[pch14@…]

PS: JOSM rendering the items would help JOSM user fix the errors created by careless iD users, that blindly follow the validator suggestions (and thereby even gain plus points from the gamification drive)

[mkoniecz]

would help JOSM user fix the errors created by careless iD users

They would readd it soon, personally I see this tag as dead on arrival.

[pch14@…]

You are right, will turn out an edit war, human vs. bot. Nevertheless, the tags serve a good purpose in damage control.

[pch14@…]

I did open this, feel free to close, wontfix or such

[skyper]

Ticket #21590 has been marked as a duplicate of this ticket.

[aceman]

I think there are semantical differences between a tram crossing and a train crossing (railway crossing). In the former, you can just look around and cross the tracks. For a train, you need to be more careful, there are further law obligations what to do. Crossing a train track may be harder/slower and penalized more than tram crossing in routers for pedestrian/car more. Even more so for wheelchair routing as in the reported case.