[Talk-transit] Bus stops in North America from GTFS data

[Roland Olbricht]

> > You may want to follow
> > British/German standard. There is a tag that identifies stops uniquely,
> > sorry can't recall at the moment. The last time I saw it was
> > Siegburg/Bonn train station.

Do you mean the "ref" tag as on node 160621? I'd strongly advice not to follow 
that way. The "ref" has also been used to list the lines stopping there and 
should not be used for something else.

I've never seen any item that identifies bus stops uniquely in Germany or 
Britain and is visible to the ordinary passenger. It is also not needed - all 
bus stops with the same name in the same town are usually very close together 
(just stops for different directions). But being unique would be never stated 
as a formal constraint. Buses sometimes stop at two nearby stops with the same 
name. Thus there is nothing comparable to the stop_code here in Germany.

John, I would advice you to just set name to the stop_code if this is the 
thing displayed on the bus stops. It is very different from the northern 
European system. But passenger (or traveller) information is the primary goal 
of the OSM data. Thus a useful information in the tag that is expected to be 
crucial ("name") is probably the best solution for Ottawa.

Cheers,

Roland