Hi,
My view (I'll try to be concise).
Being able to map both abstractions (like a schematic route) and
physical details is a real problem. We need to be able to do both. The
problem is not unique to rail. Use cases I've thought of:
- roads (the road network, vs the individual bits of tarmac)
- rail (the line vs the bits of track)
- power (the power grid vs every individual power line)
- traffic lights ("this intersection has traffic lights" vs each
individual physical traffic light)
- universities, hospitals, precincts (the campus as a whole, rather
than the individual plots of land near each other)
- bike parking (space for 20 bikes here vs 10 individual bike hoops)
- car parking (space for 200 cars here vs several individual parking areas)
- bike routes (the route follows the river, vs the two individual
tracks on each bank)
The point is: it's hard to make beautiful maps without mapping the
abstractions. The physical detail looks ok at high zoom levels, but
when you're zoomed out, it's messy - and it's really not easy to
automatically generate these kinds of abstractions.
It would be really good to have a single, consistent approach
(including terminology) for this "multiple levels of abstraction"
problem.
Steve
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