[Talk-GB] [Talk-transit] Mapping train services in Great Britain

[Gareth L]

Just in case this hasn’t been seen before, here’s a visualisation of peak time rail services a couple years ago. https://alexhancock.webs.com/Great%20Britain%20Train%20Services%20-%20Dec%202019.pdf

Very complex even with this reduced dataset.

I think realtimetrains have their own dataset for actual geographic routes taken by a given service. See https://realtimetrains.co.uk/about/sources/

No idea if they offer it via their api though.
Personally I think it’s best kept there and OSM has the waypoints/stations detailed so it could be (hopefully) easily overlaid. Many stations are sparse on detail.

Gareth

On 31 May 2021, at 22:57, Philip Barnes <phil at trigpoint.me.uk> wrote:

On Mon, 2021-05-31 at 22:18 +0100, Michael Tsang wrote:
On Monday, 31 May 2021 16:14:47 BST Roger Slevin wrote:
and one in which I agree with Tony, Mark and Peter in saying that
public
transport services and timetables don’t appear to me to have a
valid place
in OSM

We have already mapped the complete bus networks in certain cities.
In OSM
terms, a public transport route is defined as "the order where the
service
stops to carry passengers, and the path where it transverse on". It
does not
include the timetable data.

I have also mapped a lot of bus and train routes in different cities
as well,
and it is very useful for OSM to have bus and train routes. When I
travel to a
new city I use OsmAnd a lot to find which bus I need to take to go to
a certain
direction, and where it will stop.

I think you are missing the point that GB is not a city.

Cities are densly pack and urban transport systems reflect this. In
London tube trains simply stop at every station.

This structure will not work when it comes to rural stations, and what
we have works very well. It would not be efficient to stop every trains
at stations which only have a few dozen passengers in a day.


The problem with GB railways is that each departure serves completely
different
stops, which means, if we strictly follow the "one variant = one
relation"
model as in current PTv2 schema, we have to map each departure as
distinct
relations on the map, because each departure serves different stops,
which mean
they are different variants.
You also have to remember that the timetables and hence services are
seasonal to reflect different passenger demands.

Many of us have thought about train routes but concluded on a country
level they are too complex and require a huge amount of mainatainance.
The timetable changes every 6 months, and as a minimum needs to be
checked.

I started thinking about my local station, to the North trains can go
to Crewe, Chester or Manchester Piccadilly. To the south trains can go
to Shrewsbury, Birmingham International, Cardiff Central, Swansea,
Carmathen, Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven and Fishguard. That is all
before to start considering which of the dozens of stations each
service calls, or may call at if it is a request stop.

As other have said, this is not something that belongs in OSM.

If you need to work out how to get somewhere then the train companies
apps and websites work very well. If you want to include buses as well
the traveline is excellent.

Phil (trigpoint)




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