[OSM-talk] Bus stops (ready for London Mapping Party)

[Dave]

On 1/25/07, Robert (Jamie) Munro <rjmunro at arjam.net> wrote:
>
> It struck me that it should be fairly easy if we are walking around
> London to spot Bus Stops and take photos of the lists of busses that
> serve them. If we load those photos into JOSM, it will be easy to tag
> enough detail to create a useful bus map.
>
> The question is, what tags should we use?
>
> There was a thread about 3 months ago here:
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2006-October/007803.html
> but it didn't get very far, it just listed some problems that might be
> encountered.
>
> Currently, on map_features, it says you should add highway=bus_stop to
> the node. This doesn't support adding bus route numbers (or names), nor
> does it support saying that a bus stop is on only one side of the road.
>
> I propose:
>
> * add another tag on bus stops called bus_routes that has a semicolon
> separated list of bus numbers (or names for routes without a generally
> known number like the Oxford Tube).
>
> * If there are two bus stops opposite (or close to opposite), serving
> the same busses, they can just go as one node at the average point of
> the two stops.
>
> * If the bus stop is only for busses in one direction, it should have a
> direction=(N|S|E|W), pointing in the (rough) direction that the busses
> travel. (not strictly necessary on one way streets, but still useful)
>
> * If there are multiple bus stops serving different routes, one after
> the other (as in busy town centres), they can go in as one stop that
> just serves all the routes.
>
> A problem that we may have with features like bus stops is that they are
> also nodes within a way, and if an editing user is not being careful,
> they may be tempted to move them along the way to make a better curve
> elsewhere on the road. Can we add features to JOSM and the applet that
> warn you if you try to move a node in a way that has tags of it's own
> (other than created_by)?
>
> Also, should we add something to routes that branch (e.g. _a, _b etc.)
> for the different branches so that we can tell which way each bus will go?
>
> I'm not sure where I should list the above on the proposed features
> section of the wiki, so I've made a new page:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Busses
> to collect this idea and any others about representing bus transport.


There's one or two bus stops added to streets in central london already...
that I've noticed. I've only noticed them because they're not actually part
of ways at all, but a separate node to one side at the bus stop location.
This has benefits in terms of accurate placement, but ofcourse breaks the
topology somewhat.

The other piece of information for bus stops is the bus stop name. Most bus
stops in the UK have an ID within a local area, usually just single letters:
A, B, C etc although sometimes C1,C1 etc too. A ref tag of some description
could deal with this. They're very useful to make sure you're catching a bus
in the right direction...
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