[Talk-transit] Proposed Feature - 2nd RFC - Public Transport

[ant]

Hi Michał,

On 12.01.2011 12:45, Michał Borsuk wrote:
> Am 12.01.2011 12:37, schrieb ant:
>> On 12.01.2011 09:52, Michał Borsuk wrote:
>>
>>> The visually impaired are a very small minority, and clearly OSM has
>>> different, more basic issues to deal with. We should focus on the
>>> mainstream first, to get OSM out of the beta version it is now.
>>
>> It is not our primary aim to serve some kind of mainstream. It is to
>> collect any geographical data that could be useful to somebody. And
>> yes, "somebody" includes blind people, too.
>
> I did not exclude blind people from the pool of users. I simply said
> that they are a minority, and should be treated as such. Not with
> greater privileges than most of us. Therefore I see no point to spend
> great amounts of time mapping lines in a special way so that we could
> preserve the fact that line X calls at bus stop Y in each direction. I
> simply see no point to focus on this, in the present state of OSM.
>
> Look at this Western European town:
>
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=49.10581&lon=6.71405&zoom=15&layers=M
>
> I mapped one line through the town, and then simply had to get a level
> lower, to first map the streets, because simply there was nothing to
> draw the bus lines on. Later somebody added buildings from the French
> Cadastre, and the town looks grotesque: now I can guess where the
> streets should be between thebuildings. But still, there is no point to
> map more lines before the street network exists.
>
> In such a situation should we really think about the blind, or should we
> focus on the very basic: to put the lines on the map?
>

Certainly it doesn't make sense to talk about bus stops when the road 
network isn't even finished yet. Totally agree.

The point is, we are in the process of establishing a kind-of-standard 
about public transport network. There has been lots of struggle about 
this topic, and therefore it's quite an important process.
Since I am working on a project that deals with navigation for the blind 
and visually impaired, I know how important these mapping standards (if 
you can call anything in OSM a "standard" at all) are. If we continue to 
stick to the old scheme, or any extremely simplistic scheme, we are 
simply missing the basis for future development in the area of blind 
people's navigation (and probably many other areas as well).
I'm not saying everybody should do it now and everywhere. But the 
proposed public transport scheme is a solid basis to work with and one 
that is scalable enough to meet requirements we might not yet be 
thinking about.

cheers
ant