A nearby city call these crossings as "Gora¹ Lanes", an attempt to make walking fun, attractive, and accessible to more people.
From the screenshot² below, it's something like an arty zebra (or "continental") crossing, and I saw minimal use of crossing:markings=artwork in #OpenStreetMap, and taggable with crossing:markings=yes.
Yeah, can you imagine the shit storm if someone rigged up traffic lights with some strobe effect and RGB LEDs to make driving, “fun, attractive, and accessible to more people.”
In my cynicism I’ll venture that if pedestrians were required to carry insurance for collisions, insurance companies would not let these cross walks stick around for a hot 5 minutes.
Stuff like this bothers me. If cars, pedestrians, or cyclists use the crossing and the road that it crosses over, painted lines and way finding markers need to be consistent and clear for safety.
It’s fine to paint a crossing like this at an entryway to a museum or library, but not on a road.
I just learned that apart from the official meaning of "Gora" cited in the original toot, apparently, it appears to be a nod towards the argot of the @pinoy#LGBQT community, meaning "Let's go."
I agree. It's typical in OSM to use a generic "yes" when a mapper isn't sure about the "right" value just yet, and get back to it later, or maybe the next mapper can figure out a better value.
That's a specific case when I find the image=, or mapillary= tags and the like, very helpful. Usually, these are used to tell other mappers what the previous mapper saw from the photo.
In JOSM these are turned into links you can view, but not sure how it works in iD.
@SeeandMap@MapAmore@openstreetmap I know, I know, it was just a test. I knew where to find a POI with a linked Commons File and pasted the URL in the image tag, but I didn't save it 😉
I’m perfectly fine with the crosswalk being painted in a more interesting way, but looking at the sidewalk on the other side of the street there makes me think maybe that city has some more important things they need to work on for walkability before they should start worrying about prettifying stuff.
Well, unfortunately, what we see on the ground (and try to map in #OpenStreetMap ) is not necessarily always what we (or the locals) wanted, or hope to ever see.
Hopefully, it's a work in progress, and they get around to fixing more essential things. 🤞
Add comment