There has been a certain amount of traffic about the desirability to render bus routes on a map in the transit section of osm but there are unfortunately some drawbacks so I'm looking for ideas on how to get round them.
First GTFS data files are available with bus stop and routing information in them and there are some tools to allow bus stops to be imported into OSM. The first issue is licensing, but I suspect this can be overcome in time. Second more importantly the bus stop locations aren't as precise as we would like. Some agencies are as bad as 200 meters between the physical location and the reported location. If I use the GTFS term if bus stops have stop_codes on them then the local mapper can correct the position on the map. Third big agencies change the bus routes frequently. However if we can identify the stop_codes and link them to the stop_ids then we can build the route by linking the bus stops on a particular route. I've been playing and have developed a method to edit an OSM file on the local machine using Visual Basic, which means it is fairly simple to find all the bus stops and change the route numbers programatically when the new schedule comes out given a list of bus stops on the route. You can also join them in a "way" so they can be rendered as a visible route on a map. The big problem here is getting a copy of the osm file for a city. There are limits to the size of file that JOSM will download. Any suggestions? Fourth - Rendering http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2008/05/29/look-ma-no-hands/ the last map on the page. The challenge is to get more options on the rendering side. Perhaps a downloadable city .osm file that can be rendered locally with Maperitive or something similar? My local transit system has a map for normal routes, one for express routes, faster but more expensive, one for the early morning 4-6 am service which a lot of bus drivers use to get to work, one for peak hour normal fare routes, and one for school trips etc. Routes that do not run seven days a week are rendered differently than ones that do. Some routes have cycle racks on the front of the buses so there are some possibilities here for adding value with additional information. So the problem that stands out is getting the raw osm file down to the PC probably in a zip format rather than a rendered tile which may not contain the information we need. Thoughts? Thanks Cheerio John _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
