[OSM-talk] Bus Stops

[Peter Miller]

The GDF standard has a very useful 'is associated with' relation, so one
could say the bus stop (and the letter box etc) are associated with the road
element.

The UK Bus Stops database is separate from the roads layer (so people can
use OS/Navteq/TeleAtlas or even OSM!) and the bus stop DB entry has a
compulsory field for the name of the road and also a bearing field which is
in the direction the bus will leave the bus stop.

Given that we are a combined dataset I would recommend this problem is
either left to the data user (to snap bus stops to the nearest road and to
know if people drive on the left/right or if the road is a one way street
etc to get the direction) or to optional provide a relation to associate the
stop with the Way or add a compass direction.

I would strongly discourage the adding of 'fake' footpaths which don't
relate to physical stuff.

Wth regard to stop naming bus stops in the UK have the following

A 'Common Name' (for example 'Trafalgar Sq')
An 'Identifier' (for example Stand/Bay P)
A 'Bearing' (for example SW)
A 'Street' (for example The Strand)

I recommend that we use adopt the Common Name/Identified field because it
allows a general name to be used on a specific. For example get off at
'Trafalgar Sq' or a specific one for local consumption: your bus goes from
Stand P.

I agree that in the case of a road with a shelter on one side of the street
and a simple pole, or indeed nothing on the other then there should be a Bus
Stop identified on both sides with appropriate attributes about the
construction and facilities.

With regards to the services that use the stop I believe these should be
kept separate from the description of the fixed infrastructure which should
define exactly that. Schedules should form a separate layer or indeed
project, Open Timetables anyone?



Regards,



Peter


> -----Original Message-----
> From: dstubbs at gmail.com [mailto:dstubbs at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Dave
> Stubbs
> Sent: 24 April 2008 10:37
> To: Andy Robinson (blackadder)
> Cc: Jeffrey Martin; Peter Miller; talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Bus Stops
> 
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Andy Robinson (blackadder)
> <blackadderajr at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Jeffrey Martin wrote:
> >  >Sent: 24 April 2008 9:06 AM
> >
> > >To: Peter Miller
> >  >Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org
> >
> > >Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Bus Stops
> >  >
> >
> > >Some people advocate nodes off to the side of the way
> >  >to represent the location of the pole or shelter in relation
> >  >to the road.
> >  >
> >  >Near where I live (Korea) there is often a shelter on
> >  >one side of the road for buses going both directions.
> >  >In that case I'm guessing I would put a shelter node
> >  >on one side of the road and a node that is not a shelter
> >  >on the other side.
> >  >
> >  >How do I relate these nodes to the way? I don't
> >  >like the idea of short segments perpendicular to
> >  >the way.
> >
> >  Because a bus stop is a highway feature it really in my view should be
> part
> >  of it. And because we map what we see on the ground then logically if
> there
> >  are two bus stops not quite opposite each other then I place two nodes,
> one
> >  for each and tag them appropriately. Placing short links from a bus
> stop
> >  node placed off the highway to the highway itself is I guess fine if
> those
> >  links are tagged as highway=footway, but personally I think that's a
> lot of
> >  unnecessary effort and complexity in the map.
> 
> Where as I think of bus stops as a pavement feature -- I really don't
> care which road it's on, that's the bus driver's problem ;-)
> I get the feeling we should be tagging both (if you can be bothered)
> and linking the two -- but I'd prefer this didn't happen with short
> footways... they come across to me as a bit fake. It's a virtual link,
> so just keep it virtual: bus_stops=here or something. Alternatively
> get out the relation box of tricks, but that might be unnecessarily
> complicated.
> It's certainly the better option than hacking someone's nice bus stops
> into your own preferred style, even if you aren't going to do it that
> way for new mapping.
> 
> >
> >  The remaining issue revolves around the direction of the bus at a
> particular
> >  node. I didn't have an answer to this until I looked at what the
> signage was
> >  on my local bust stops. Now I find it easy to tag because each one
> tells me
> >  in which direction the bus is travelling (eg "towards Birmingham"). So
> I add
> >  a towards= tag and jobs a good un.
> 
> This works! I generally find I need the help of a timetable to figure
> out if I'm at the right stop as it's quite normal for the bus to be
> heading in the wrong direction for the place stated if it's trying to
> catch another stop on the way, but given the whole route information
> you should be able to figure it out.
> 
> > I'm not going to worry at the moment
> > about how I might use this tag to make bus route information, the
> important
> > aspect is that the data that's needed to work that out later is in the
> > database
> 
> 
> And lets face it, the moment someone actually starts using this data
> we'll probably decide to do something completely different anyway :-)
> 
> Dave