[Talk-transit] Importing bus stops without names on sign

[Eduardo]

Hi Martin,

El vie, 22-04-2016 a las 20:31 +0200, Martin Weilandt escribió:
> I'd appreciate any hints and perhaps experiences from other parts of
> the world (probably struggling with similar problems).
> 
> Cheers
> Martin

In Managua (Nicaragua), we faced similar problems when surveying all
the bus stops. Most of them do not have any sign nor shelter, so it's
hard to tell whether they are "official" or just "convenient" spots
that people claim and just happen to have the habit to wait in. It's a
huge mess.

Fortunately, we found the tables with the "official" names for every
stop[1]. The nomenclature is somewhat makeshift tough. This is because
we do not use street names nor house numbers for addresses in real
life, but rather *reference points*. We'd say "from Pharmacy Foobar,
go three blocks south. On your right hand you'll see a green house in
the corner."

So "official" bus stop names look like this:
* "300m west from BAC Bank"
* "In front of Metrocentro Mall"
* "Where Pepsi used to exist" (my favorite one)

As you can see this is a nightmare, because the reference points may
change their name or disappear. So what we did was to use a the name of
the reference point in the "name" tag (to keep it short) and the long
official name in "official_name."

"300m west from BAC Bank" would become "BAC Bank" in name.
"In front of Metrocentro Mall" would become "Metrocentro" in
name.
You can see these examples:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3275463516
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2475807999

But we did this just because we wanted a short name that people could
remember easily, so that they started to use these in daily life as an
intent of standardization. And also because we use the value of
"name" for the OSM Nicaragua's own web public transport map, the
only one available. (Thanks to Felix Delattre!):
http://rutas.mapanica.net/#13/12.1250/-86.2500

Eduardo

[1] 
http://irtramma.guegue.info/media/documentos/DIST._ENTRE_PARADA_RUTA_112.pdf