On 11/06/2010, at 12:13 PM, John Smith wrote:
> On 11 June 2010 11:45, Simon Biber <simonbi...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>> My personal preference would have been to use give_way,  since it follows 
>> the tradition of using British English as the source of tag names, but the 
>> majority of mappers so far have chosen yield.
> 
> I've already shifted giveway to give_way and wrote a wiki page, since
> there was none for yield and and doesn't help when I did a search of
> yield in xapi I came up with nothing because I switched the i and e
> around...
> 
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dgive_way
> 
> I wouldn't consider ~100 sign indicative of much, other than a lacking
> of presets, I could easily bump highway=give_way up by marking every
> intersection in the suburb, which is why I brought this thread up in
> the first place... :)

Ah, this old chestnut - it's been debated a few times before on talk (or maybe 
later tagging) list. There are several methods people use, which are mostly 
non-conflicting. Below is a hopefully non-biased summary of the options, then a 
completely biased argument from me:

1) The original, highway=stop (and =giveway/give_way/yield) on an intersection 
node. The big problem is that you can't say who has to stop, so it can only 
really represent all-way-stop situations.

2) highway=stop (and give_way) on nodes just back from the intersection 
(usually level with the sign or road markings), applies at the closest 
intersecting way[0]. Solves the main problem of (1), but you can no longer tell 
what affects a way just by looking at the way and it's nodes.

3)  stop=w,e;give_way=ne and similar on the intersection node. Solves problem 
of (1) unless the roads join close to parallel and you can use nne if 
necessary. Requires heuristic guesses about what roads it applies to (easily 
done, some people object on principle). Some inconistency in current use about 
whether you use "ns" or "n;s", so you can't tell without looking at the way 
locations whether "ne" is one road or two.

4) A stop=start/end/both tag on the way. Simple, but break horrible if someone 
splits the way into two without fixing it.

5) A 'stop' relation which contains the roads that have to stop and the 
intersection node(s). Can represent extra information such as "stop if the 
traffic lights are out" or that it only applies in certain hours, but no-one 
uses this at present. Arguably an unnecessary relation depending on how you 
feel about relations

6) A 'traffic_control' relation which is the generalisation of (5), same 
arguments apply. No more complex than (5) but can represent stop, give way, and 
other things in a single relation.

7) stop=all or stop=yes on the intersection node

And there may be others.


Statistics (from XAPI at 8:30 this morning) and links:
(1) and (2) 13559 uses, a quick random sample of 30 has most of them being (1), 
even though some of them aren't all-way-stopswhen yu look at Google Street View 
:( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dstop
(3) 122 uses of stop=*, 0 of give_way=*, not documented AFAIK
(4) 768 uses, a mix of stop=yes/both/all/-1, most applying to multiple 
intersections http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dstop
(5) 457 relations for 523 ways 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Relation:type%3Dstop
(6) 197 relations for 228 ways 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Relation:type%3Dtraffic_control
(7) 19 uses. plus 6 stop=both in four-way intersection nodes, 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dstop

(1) is easily the most popular (it's been around the longest) but it can't 
accurately represent a lot of things, and people use it incorrectly. If someone 
wants to know how many (2)s there are, they can go script up a check whether 
the highway=stop nodes are on intersecting ways or not.

I think everyone agrees (1) isn't good enough, as it can't handle the simple 
case of one road having to give way to another, and that (6) is obviously 
better than (5) because it handles more with no additional complexity. The 
remaining choices depends on what your opinion on relations is, and whether you 
view these as separate "traffic must stop" POIs or a single "traffic control at 
the intersection" thing.


Personally, I think that this is an okay use of relations and tend to see it as 
a single "traffic control at the intersection" thing. So wrote the wiki page 
for (6) after chatting with a few people on IRC a while back and use that. I 
know John and others favour (2) and there are people who use all the others too.


[0] Some debate about whether this means the closest intersecting way, closest 
intersecting highway=* way or closest intersecting road-type highway=*. If a 
footpath/cycleway crosses the road, traffic has to give way to them as well as 
to the vehicular traffic, so can require some heuristic guesses, but it 
shouldn't be that much of a problem in practice.

-- James
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