[Talk-transit] Summary of Public Transport Proposal Criticism

[Christian]

On 23.01.2011 13:18, Michał Borsuk wrote:
> On 01/23/2011 12:57 PM, Vincent Privat wrote:
>>
>> 2011/1/23 Michał Borsuk <michal.borsuk at gmail.com
>> <mailto:michal.borsuk at gmail.com>>
>>
>>     Could you please explain what you mean, because I'm not sure. The
>>     links provided show bus routes with nothing difficult in particular.
>>     They could be mapped as one relation each, only if bus stops are
>>     tagged correctly.
>>
>> I just want to be sure we can draw in OSM the exact same map as I gave
>> as examples.
>
> That is possible with openbusmap.org (öpnvkarte.de), although there 
> are reports of some minor problems.
>
>> These examples show distincts ways taken by buses,
>> depending on the direction. If it can be done for these simple lines
>> just with a single relation and stops tagged correctly, it's fine for 
>> me.
>
> No, this can't be done in such detail, but it's not necessary as of 
> 2011. All you need to know is where is the bus stop for the direction 
> you're interested in, or whether the bus stop you found serves you 
> correctly. All the rest is done by the routing software.
>
> Note that most modern public transport companies no longer publish bus 
> routes as maps, because 1) they force you to use the routing software, 
> 2) bus lines often vary throughout the day or week -> nowadays it's 
> impossible to draw bus lines correctly. How do you put the message on 
> OSM that "bus passes here on Sunday morning"?
>

I'm sorry, but saying it is not necessary seems very arrogant to me. 
Maybe it is not necessary for what you want to use OSM for, but that 
doesn't mean that we can't use it for something else. Last time I 
checked, OSM was open and everybody was able to map whatever they wanted.

Thinking about the 100+ messages about this topic, this might actually 
be the reason for the problems in finding a good proposal.
You have an idea of what you want to do with the data and you think that 
everybody else wants to do the same stuff. That's not the case!
People will want to use the data in different ways and that is fine, so 
what we need is a public transport proposal that allows everybody to map 
whatever they want to map. That includes people like you who only want 
the bus stops, but it also includes people like Vincent or me who would 
like to map also physical path a bus takes on the street.

Christian