Local times of deterministic paths and self-similar processes with stationary increments as normalized numbers of interval crossings

We prove a general result on a relationship between a limit of normalized numbers of interval crossings by a càdlàg path and an occupation measure associated with this path. Using this result we define local times of fractional Brownian motions (classically defined as densities of relevant occupation measure) as weak limits of properly normalized numbers of interval crossings. We also discuss a similar result for càdlàg semimartingales, in particular for alpha-stable processes, and for Rosenblatt processes, and provide natural examples of deterministic paths which possess quadratic or higher order variation but no local times.