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

[Sander Deryckere]

2010/11/23 Michael von Glasow <michael at vonglasow.com>

> 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.
>
>
This woudn't cause mapnik to render double. I believe mapnik only renders
when a tile is visited and changed, or after a longer period. As long as
nobody visits the tile, it wouldn't be rendered for a long while. On the
other hand, maybe mapnik could render both styles while the info needed is
still in the RAM and not on the main disks, but I don't know what costs the
most time: loading data from HDD to RAM or processing the data.



> 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.
>

 I believe most power users don't use a ie browser. So if they are not power
users, the extra clicks to download and view it are small. So converting it
is not really needed.


>
> 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.
>
>
A project that could help in the future with routing:
transiki<http://www.transiki.org/>it's still in alpha stadium, but if
it gets of the ground, it might be wurth
implementing it in OSM. (in both ways: transiki giving data to OSM for
routing and OSM having a dialog to input data in Transiki.)

>
> 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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