[Talk-transit] [Talk-gb-westmidlands] NaPTAN data import

Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) ajrlists at googlemail.com
Fri Mar 6 10:58:33 GMT 2009


Brian Prangle wrote:
>Sent: 06 March 2009 8:27 AM
>To: Talk-gb-westmidlands at openstreetmap.org; talk-transit at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: [Talk-gb-westmidlands] NaPTAN data import
>
>Hi everyone
>
>We discussed at our West Mids meeting last night the best way forward. Here
>is what we would like to see happen:
>
>1. Proceeed with the import on the basis of the proposed naptan taggings.
>All imported data should have the naptan: prefix as we feel  it is
>important to identify the source of the data and differentiate it from
>OSMer-generated data
>2. If it's easy to code,  generate ways between related nodes for things
>like plusbus zones, stopareas etc. We didn't discuss however how to tag
>these, so I guess just leave them untagged. If it's going to be difficult
>and slow down the implementation, then ignore it and just import the nodes
>and we'll have to generate ways manually.
>3. Rather than import for the whole West Midlands, just import for
>Birmingham as a test area - it's easier for us to cover as there fewer bus
>stops in a smaller area, and it also won't piss off our neighbours in
>Coventry - most of us are based in Birmingham.
>4. The import should not tag the data with highway=bus_stop. We'd rather
>have un-rendered nodes that we can see in the editors and then either merge
>with existing data  or "switch on" by tagging where we haven't yet
>surveyed. It is OK however to tag taxiranks with amenity=taxi (very few
>people have been surveying and tagging these)
>5. Can we have a csv file of the data so we can keep track of our
>verification and record variations, problems on the ground etc. and co-
>ordinate activities so we don't go off duplicating effort?  In the future
>other OSMers will have the benefit of Christophe's visual tool to do this.
>We'll give regular updates here on how we're faring and produce a short
>report summarising our experience for future imports.
>6. As a local initiative we are proposing to cease using (and convert
>existing data) the ref=xx tag for identification plates we find on the
>ground as it doesn't currently match any naptan data (and so can't be
>regarded as a global standard reference) and we will use instead
>asset_ref=xxx. This is Andy's suggestion and as he's the one who's entered
>most of this data and he'll have to do most of the work - we all agreed
>readily!
>
>Let us know if there are any problems with this
>
>Regards
>
>Brian
>


I've changed all the ref's on highway=bus_stop to asset_ref for the wider
Birmingham area.

While doing the change I also spotted other differences between the way we
have been entering data for route references in Birmingham. I've been using
route_ref= followed by a semi colon separated list. Brian and Christoph
appear to have been using route= followed by the route numbers separated by
pipes. I was using pipes in the early days of bus stop mapping but changed
to better reflect the common usage of separating values with semi colons.

So the question is, what format should we settle on so that all the
Birmingham stops have the same format?

My personal opinion is that if the route is a number we should use route_ref
and if it's a descriptive name (not sure we have those in Brum but no
matter) then route=

Pipes out to be replaced with semi colons to reflect general separation of
values that way. This is in keeping with the value guidelines on the wiki
(Map Features).

Currently the wiki has nothing much on bus_stops so its an opportunity to
set out the format generally in use for the west mids.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dbus_stop

Cheers

Andy





More information about the Talk-transit mailing list