[Talk-transit] Public transport on the main OSM page

Sébastien Aubry sebastien.aubry31 at gmail.com
Tue Nov 23 23:21:01 GMT 2010


Dear Michael,

I really support your idea.

I can see two ways to proceed:
- like you said, this could be added to the default OSM map as a layer. To
ask for such a feature, we should create a ticket on the OSM trac:
- we could provide Transiki with these ideas. This default, simple map could
be the first step of this initiative, allowing us to move further by
inputting the schedules in the next steps.


Sébastien


On 23 November 2010 22:07, Michael von Glasow <michael at vonglasow.com> wrote:

> Hello list,
>
> For my efforts mapping public transportation routes in Milan, I have up to
> now relied on Öpnvkarte to look at the data I entered and occasionally look
> up the best way to get around town.
>
> In the meantime the situation has changed: Öpnvkarte hasn't been updated
> since early September; a similar service at latlon.org has discontinued
> coverage for Western Europe (they seem to have limited themselves to
> Belorussia, Russia and maybe some of their neighbors) and the third player
> in the field, OSM Transport, comes with disadvantages (slow to load, slow to
> update, less "nice" to use and not open-source).
>
>
> Couldn't we do something similar right on the OSM homepage, running on OSM
> infrastructure?
>
>
> The advantages would be:
> - Easy switching between "normal" and "public transport" view (just a
> matter of switching base layers)
> - Only one URL to remember
> - Uses most recent data (if directly connected to live OSM database)
> - Standard OSM tools available (for instance, exporting the map as PDF)
> - Could be a "killer app" for OSM (until now this information is available
> only for single networks from their respective transport companies, if at
> all; OSM would be the first to do this for the whole world)
>
>
> Following the iterative approach with which OSM was and is being built,
> here's how it could be implemented:
>
> Step 1: Add the new map view
>
> Create a new Mapnik style sheet with routes and numbers overlaid on it. I
> would suggest the familiar Mapnik view but in black and white (at the most I
> would color some landuses), possibly reducing the number of POIs if the map
> gets too cluttered. All stop names would be shown; routes and their numbers
> would be drawn in color on top of everything else. This would preserve all
> information but make public transport data stand out.
>
> This should be fairly easy, it would take a second Mapnik style sheet and
> possibly some post-processing to render the routes. The database is already
> there; all rendering-related effort I would expect to roughly double as
> every tile would get rendered twice (once per style). Not sure about the
> effort to run Mapnik with two different styles.
>
> Step 2: Add stop information
>
> Add a new overlay, which makes all stops clickable. Clicking on a stop
> opens a bubble with information on it, such as name and lines stopping
> there.
>
> This would require some extra coding, but most of the work has been done
> already (e.g. OpenStreetBugs, which has an overlay for clickable bugs). Some
> extra post-processing will probably be needed on the data in order to group
> nearby stops belonging together (take Munich's central station, which
> consists of one light railway stop, two subway stops, three tram stops and a
> couple of bus stops): that way the user just needs to click the station and
> gets a popup with all the light railway, subway, tram and bus lines.
> Öpnvkarte already does this, so it's not impossible.
>
> Step 2a: Line sketches
>
> In the popup for each stop, clicking the line number opens a new window
> with a sketch of the line.
>
> Probably easy play: Sketch Line from OSM Server Scripts [1] (example [2])
> already does an excellent job at this; just the choice of colors may need
> some tweaking. The only problem is that the output is in SVG format, which
> not all browsers out in the field handle well: we may need to convert that
> into a bitmap on the fly.
>
> Step 3: Extensions
>
> Up to the imagination of the community: For example, if one day we add
> routing to the OSM page, we could extend that to finding a public transport
> connection.
>
>
> Taking Milan as an example, step 2a would already put us ahead of what
> Google has to offer today: Transit is not available for Milan yet, bus stops
> are missing completely on the map, the location of subway stops is
> approximate at best and the network data seems to be out of date.
>
>
> Now here's the catch: While I am ready to contribute to such an effort, I
> cannot do it alone - my knowledge of the OSM infrastructure is generic at
> best. Is there anyone out there who:
> - knows how to get started in order to get new items on the main OSM page,
> in terms of both technology and who to talk to?
> - is willing to participate in such an effort?
>
> Any input is greatly appreciated.
>
> Michael
>
>
> [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Server_Side_Script
> [2] http://78.46.81.38/api/sketch-line?network=SITAM&ref=19&style=padua
>
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