THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL.

In most Yangtze Delta cities, buses usually operate in three separate networks: City Buses (城市公交), Suburban Buses (城乡公交) and Town-Village Buses (镇村公交). Some of those do operate outside the city boundaries, which are classified as Intercity Buses (毗邻公交), they can also be a City Bus Line, a Suburban Bus Line or a Town-Village Bus Line.

There exist a group of enthusiasts who spend their weekends from one city to another city purely by buses or subway lines, such a route is possible by benefiting from the tremendously complicated and connected bus network of Yangtze Delta Cities. I’m one of those enthusiasts who usually spend my entire weekend on buses and subway lines from city to city, as such I do exactly have “local knowledge” that I could benefit others if I can draw these lines on OpenStreetMap. In such a circumstance I figured out that there isn’t a proper way to mark the type of a bus line. After a long discussion with some of the experienced users, I decided to add an unofficial tag network:route:bus:type to tackle this special issue around Yangtze Delta.

For values of network:route:bus:type I would temporary provide city, urban, suburban, town, intercity as five valid options, further extension is possible.

• city (城市公交), suburban (城乡公交), town (镇村公交) options are used when 3-level bus networks exist in such an area.
• urban (市域公交) option is used when there’s only a single bus network, this option should not use on it’s own since you don’t really need it.
• intercity (毗邻公交) option is used for bus routes that operate outside the city boundary limit, this is a optional tag and should be used with the other options.

… See full entry