[Talk-gb-westmidlands] NAPTAN bus stop database

[Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists)]

Brian, useful overview. My thoughts inline below:

>-----Original Message-----
>From: talk-gb-westmidlands-bounces at openstreetmap.org [mailto:talk-gb-
>westmidlands-bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Brian Prangle
>Sent: 18 February 2009 8:33 PM
>To: Talk-gb-westmidlands at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: [Talk-gb-westmidlands] NAPTAN bus stop database
>
>I seem to be having a conversation with one fellow enthusiast on talk
>transit - who's done quite a bit of preliminary work on understanding the
>NAPTAN database and writing a prototype importer ( Christophe have you had
>any offline conversations with Thomas Wood?). What do think about a trawl
>on talk gb for opinions?  Whatever we do here in the West Midlands has to
>work everywhere so I think we should widen out the discussions despite your
>misgivings Andy. I don't think a consensus of two people is a good basis on
>which to proceeed

Agreed, worth at least posting to talk but maybe nail down the best
consensus of the two first.

>
>Things to decide:
>
>Onstreet bus stops or offstreet as well?

Its all data, go for it.

>How do we cope with busstops misaligning with existing ways? Should we be
>worried?

I don't see why we should. A resurvey can decide if the position needs
further edit.

>How do we cope with bustops where the roads have not yet been added? Should
>we be worried?

We should add these, since they help those in the area to get roads mapped.
If the bus stops are showing a logical path then a user might even put in a
first pass without need of a GPS.

>How do we cope with existing busstops
>Do we add the NAPTAN data as nodes that don't render and then are switched
>on as OSMers on the ground confirm them?

This would be my recommendation, at least for a test area. I'd be happy to
have an area close to me done both ways and then see which is the more
practical.

 Or do we add them as tagged
>highway=bus_stop with additional NAPTAN tags- could be messy where there
>are existing bus stops?
>Region by region import or big-bang once we've trialled the West Midlands?

I would suggest the TIGER approach where local users request bus stop import
for their area. They then potentially get a choice on who its implemented. A
one size fits all approach may not be appropriate.

>Perhaps we can leave that one until we've done our trial and let the world
>know how best to correlate the import with what's on the ground
>
>I'm convinced that we should only import bus stops at this stage and leave
>all the other public transport points until later

Agreed. For example, Chris Schmidt has been doing the MASSGIS import for the
Massachusetts. He started with just a subset of the data (streets etc) and
has more recently been adding other "layers" of the data. 

>
>After this  "functional approach" discussion there's the separate issue of
>what NAPTAN data fields get imported and how they're tagged. I think we
>should import the minimum set we can.

I think I disagree on this one. Would prefer to have all the data for an
object in the import. Rather than attempt to decide exactly how they should
be tagged addition data fields for an object (eg bus stop) can be imported
simply with the same referencing as the original data source. This can be
changed by script at a later date if desired.

Cheers

Andy