[Talk-us] Bus Route Mapping in Baltimore

[Mike N]

On 1/8/2013 4:18 PM, Elliott Plack wrote:
> Just an FYI/general info announcement. I'm working with fellow mapper
> MDroads<http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/mdroads>    (and any other OSM
> editors of course) to map bus routes of Maryland Transit Administration bus
> lines throughout the Baltimore region of Maryland.

   Thanks for sharing about this project!

> I'm doing my best to adhere to
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Public_transport  though the relations for
> stops are*very*  tedious. Therefore, phase one has been getting the route
> relations mapped. Once complete, I'll look at adding bus stops as
> public_transport=platform.

   I tagged bus stops as both public_transport=platform and 
highway=bus_stop.   This has the side benefit of being recognized by 
more data consumers and renderers.

   The Public Transport plugin for JOSM helps a bit in adding streets to 
a route, but probably not much help in adding stops to the route 
relation.  To clarify:

    Each stop does not require its own separate relation.
    Each stop *may* be added to the bus route relations which stop 
there.   But even then, if some other organization is creating a GTFS 
dataset, including stops in the route relation is optional in my opinion.
    The Wiki does refer to a public_transport=platform relation for a 
bus station - there may be a number of these in the Baltimore area.