[OSM-talk] Is anyone making public transport routing maps basedon OpenStreetMap data?

[Nick Whitelegg]

>You can't crowdsource a timetable. You can't crowdsource the future
>without objective evidence.

>You can, however, crowdsource what has happened in the past, and use
>it to make list of when the trains usually used to run. But I have
>absolutely no interest in an application that says "trains usually ran
>on a Sunday at 10.35am up until last weekend" because I actually want
>to go *this* Sunday and I want to know when the trains are *going* to
>be running, which is in the future and the timetable changed this
>week[1].

>So as far as I'm concerned, the only really useful source of
>timetables is whoever operates the service.

Whilst there may be copyright issues in doing this in practice, there is 
in theory a good reason for having an independent source of timetable 
data: you could offer web API functionality that the actual rail/bus 
companies are not offering, which aids the integration of the data into 
other sites. Also it allows the development of independent train/bus 
journey planners which the individual companies may not wish to develop 
themselves.


Nick