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

[Michał Borsuk]

Am 12.01.2011 12:59, schrieb ant:
> Hi Michał,
>
>
> 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).
Yes, we are - at the cost of (sorry to repeat the mantra) "efficiency, 
compatibility with the existing software and easier learning curve". 
 From our point of view (or mine, depends how you see it), the quality 
of the final product is a mathematical product of quite a few parameters 
(including the mantra above), NOT the quality of the data alone.

> 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.

I've already provided my criticism to the proposed schema, so not to 
repeat myself, on another topic:

I have been sort of thinking along the same lines as you are here 
(assistance to the users of public transport). I came to the conclusion 
that the easiest thing would be to take the bus stop code and combine it 
with the link to the local timetable online. For example, to cover 
entire area of Germany one would need to import stop codes as the 
"stop_id" tag, and then have a list of online timetables combined with 
geographical location those timetables cover. As some people (myself 
included) have already imported stop_id's, the last step - the mapping 
of public transport authorities to the geographical area, and providing 
a link to the online timetable is relatively banal. An overlay would 
then take the stop_id, combine it with the URL, and here opens your 
timetable website.

I am writing this, because I have heard of NAPTAN, and I am sure a 
similar plan could be applied in the UK. My point is not to reinvent the 
wheel, no matter how much one likes programming.

> cheers
also,
> ant

michal

-- 
Best regards, mit freundlichen Grüssen, meilleurs sentiments, Pozdrowienia,

Michał Borsuk