[Talk-GB] Bus routes and names

[David Woolley]

On 20/08/14 20:45, Antje Maroussi wrote:
> Whereas I use "London Buses route 24 Northbound” to help editors each
> variant so they can put it to the right bus stop, max93600 has been
> changing them carelessly with the comment "Modifications diverses”:
> in this editor’s recent edits, so that both directions of Bus 24 read
> "Relation: Bus 24 : Grosvenor Road ↔ Royal Free Hospital (see 3523629
> v25 and 3523630 v26).

My take on this is that, assuming there is no name regularly used by the 
public (and which applies to the whole of the mapped route):

- route names should contain just enough to distinguish them from other 
route relations in the same area;
- as far as possible should reflect how a member of the public might 
refer to them;
- sort relative to other route relations in such a way that it is easy 
to find the correct one within a long list;
- ideally sort correctly relative to ones without a name.

I think that giving both to and from destinations is going to be wrong, 
unless there is are route variants that have different combinations.  I 
think there is a case for using the destination when using route 
masters, as the destination will appear on the front of the bus. 
However, many people will use buses for short hops and may think of them 
in terms of the direction indicated on the stop, which is normally given 
as a place name much closer than the final destination, or in terms of 
the local direction of travel.  However, the local direction of travel 
may be opposite to the general trend, so may not be useful for the 
overall route.

I like the idea of the general trend direction, as it is a simple rule, 
but I think final destination may be more appropriate in some cases.  An 
extreme case is circular routes.  The cases near me are split into 
different route numbers for clockwise and anti-clockwise, but both list 
the same final destination.  If sharing a route number, I think those 
would need to be distinguished using clockwise and anti-clockwise. 
(Are there any figure of eight routes?)

Going back to your version, I think including the network also amounts 
to putting metadata in an invented name.  Generally, you will not get 
the same route number with different networks, in the same area, as that 
would confuse the public.  The exception might be national versus local 
buses, but that doesn't need the full network name.

Considering the non-route master case, particularly, putting just the 
route reference as the name can clash with other networks, like cycling 
networks.  Either you have to give buses a privileged status, or you 
need to include the fact that it is a bus route.

If one throws in the sorting consideration, it is best to have the route 
number first.  That is also consistent with common usage of bus names: 
"catch the [number] 21 bus".  Common usage might also include "towards 
xxxx", but xxxx may be an intermediate place, or a local direction of 
travel, so might not be useful for naming the whole route.

I'd therefore prefer:

999 Bus <direction>bound
999 Bus towards <destination>
or
999 Bus [anti-]clockwise

as appeared most useful in the context, and always giving precedence to 
some established name for the route.

Incidentally, looking at one of the examples you gave, they had placed 
an origin in the name, but not in the metadata, so I think they may have 
had a poor understanding of metadata.