Talk:Key:traffic signals:countdown

Countdown to green or red?

How do we tag if countdown goes to green or to red light? Both is existing. And probably countdown to changing/switching, too. --Chris2map (talk) 18:55, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Pictures on Wikimedia Commons of various examples (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Countdown_traffic_signals) ----Chris2map (talk) 19:44, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

It seems to me there are three flavors, countdown till green, countdown till red and countdown both till green and red. Until now I saw only only ones counting to green and I used signals:countdown=till_green for them. ---- Emvee (talk) 17:46, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

The majority of example images show a countdown during the "green" phase which contradicts the description. Should we change the description to contain all three options, and propose the possibility for more specific values if deemed necessary? --Mueschel (talk) 14:13, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I think we should edit Wiki with already being used till_green and till_red values. Kubahaha (talk) 15:38, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I did add till_green. I did not add other values yet as taginfo shows no usage of them. Emvee (talk) 18:13, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Provide the time value (number of seconds)

Because we must assume that majority of the existing tagging is for countdown to green (since description states that) and some want to provide the time value (number of seconds) – what do you think of this proposal: Negative numbers for the countdown to red (or stop; it's not necessarily a colour signal), e.g. "-10". So positive numbers would be countdown to green/go, negative numbers countdown to red/stop. (in seconds if no unit given). --Chris2map (talk) 13:33, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

In the Netherlands, these count-down signals do not count numerically down. As far as I understand things that is because Dutch traffic lights are smart and do not use a fixed schedule but one that is demand based. Based on my experience the countdown can stop, for example if a bus or emergency vehicles show up but (more often) the count down is speed up because there is no more other other traffic. Based on this, I would opt for a separate key to specify the numerical countdown time. Emvee (talk) 16:09, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The timings of traffic signals tend to change during the day and are subject to change quite often. There was already at least one attempt to add traffic signal timings to OSM which wasn't received well for this reason. --Mueschel (talk) 16:14, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

True, in many cases it will be impossible to map the dynamic countdowns. I'm not going to map countdowns. At my location there are no visualized countdowns. I just recognised some numeric values in database. So just an idea. --Chris2map (talk) 17:35, 2 July 2023 (UTC)