[Tagging] Tourist bus stop

[Paul Allen]

On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 at 07:13, Jo <winfixit at gmail.com> wrote:

> What about long_distance_bus, if you don't like coach? motorbus doesn't
> really convey much information. All buses we are talking about have a motor.
>

Indeed.  Also, it's not a term I've encountered very often (if at all) in
British English.


> When I saw the initial conversation in Italian, I thought the person
> asking was asking about coach buses that were transporting tourists on an
> on demand, or on group reservation basis. For such buses there are
> dedicated areas where they can load / unload people, but that's more like
> parking.
>

Having had some time to think about it, and seeing the
increasingly-diverging opinions here,
it's time to give my current thinking on this.

For me (an Englishman), a coach, in the context of buses, means a
comfortable, long-distance
bus with the capability of transporting luggage.  Coaches are used on
long-distance (several
hours of travel time) routes and for transporting people on touring
holidays ("It's Tuesday, so this
must be Rome.")  This accords with Wiktionary's definition 3 (British
English) of a coach:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coach

For me, a tourist bus is (usually) an open-topped, double-decker bus
carrying tourists
around a single town/city (and possibly a few nearby locations).  How they
get to that
town/city is (usually) a different mode of transport.  There is somebody
(either the
driver or a guide) giving a running commentary.

Obviously, there are overlaps in that coaches taking people on holiday or
to events
are carrying tourists.  A coach driver may make an occasional announcement,
and
there may even be a guide making announcements.  But coaches are about
long-distance travel (usually with luggage) whilst tourist buses cover
short distances
and have no special provision for stowing luggage.  Tourist buses are
ordinary (not very
comfortable) buses, usually with the top cut off.  Coaches are
comfortable.  Holiday coaches
usually require you to book a ticket in advance; long-distance coaches
permit (and sometimes
require) reservations and often require you to buy a ticket from an office
rather than on the bus.
Tourist buses can sometimes be booked in advance but may permit you to
simply board at
one of their stops.

In fact, if we're talking about Flixbus, Eurolines, Greyhound, etc. I think
> highway=bus_stop is just fine. Add a tag for operator or network and it's
> obvious and clear those are not bus stops for the local bus lines.
>

Those would be long-distance coaches running to a timetable, not coaches
carrying
people on holiday to a destination or event.  For OSM purposes it's
probably OK to treat
them as buses, even though they may have only two stops (the two termini).

However, these coach holidays https://www.richardsbros.co.uk/coach-holidays/
are not buses in the above sense.  Booking is required.  Luggage is
carried.  The
pick-up point is fixed, the drop-off point(s) varies depending on the
specific
destination.  The pick-up point may or may not be an ordinary bus stop, but
usually
isn't for most operators.  These day tours
https://www.richardsbros.co.uk/day-tours/
fall into the same broad category as the coach holidays.

These are tourist buses https://edinburghtour.com/

-- 
Paul
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20190916/cec0a75b/attachment.html>