Proposal:Differentiation for routes of public transport

Differentiation for routes of public transport
Proposal status:	Abandoned (inactive)
Proposed by:	Ialokim
Applies to:
Definition:	Distinguish between different Public Transport route scopes, types and services
Draft started:	2017-10-20

Proposal

The proposal adds a standardized way to differentiate between route scopes (local, regional, national and international) and public transport route types (like express, long-distance bus service vs. urban city bus or high-speed intercity train vs. regional commuter).

Rationale

As for now, there is no standardized way in OSM to tag the difference between a city bus service and an intercity bus service. Because of that, I came up with the idea to use route=coach for long-distance vs. the normal route=bus for short-distance bus services. There were many people interested in the idea, but they did not agree with this black-and-white-solution. They mentioned many more cases like (just some examples):

• Buses connecting a city to surrounding towns and villages. These might have quite a few stops in the city itself, but fewer than city buses, and lots of stops in the surrounding region. (Alan gr)
• express airport buses as part of the urban network (Alan gr)
• express variants of normal city routes (Alan gr)
• long-distance routes with both express and stopping services (Alan gr)
• tourism bus services (AgusQui)
• Express commuter services (SK53)
• Shuttle services (SK53)

I then continued to search a bit through the OSM-Wiki and found this discussion on the Buses-Talkpage mentioning factory bus lines, school bus lines, buses on demand, peak-time bus lines, train-replacing bus lines and some more. There's also a similar tagging method suggested and used by mostly German railway mappers who differentiate between service=high_speed, service=long_distance, service=regional, service=commuter, service=car, service=car_shuttle, service=night and service=tourism. The non-approved Oxomoa-Scheme also suggested a way to distinguish bus services with bus=* and service=*, too, which was lost in the approved Proposed features/Public Transport scheme. However, these particular keys are already used in other circumstances: bus=yes indicates whether a bus stops at a stop position and service=* is mainly used for road stuff, so there is a need for new keys and I thought of namespacing.

Tagging

Thanks to many comments on the talkpage and on the mailing list, I have elaborated this proposal adding the following more specific tagging scheme, mainly for public transport routes, but the first key is also applicable to other types of routes.

They should be present on the route_master relation and the corresponding route relations.

• scope=* to indicate the served area of a route

• scope=urban for urban tram/bus/trolleybus routes
• scope=local for local road/bus routes
• scope=regional for regional road/bus/train routes
• scope=national for national road/bus/train routes
• scope=international for international bus/train routes

The latter four values could be used instead of the corresponding network=* on hiking and cycling routes.

• stopping_pattern=* to indicate the frequency the public transport service stops

• stopping_pattern=all_stops regular public transport service which stops at every stop alongside the route (default)
• stopping_pattern=limited public transport service that does not stop at all stops alongside the route
• stopping_pattern=main_stops express public transport service which only stops at few (main) stations
• stopping_pattern=non_stop shuttle public transport service which only stops at the corresponding start and end points

• public_transport:type=* to specify if the public transport service has a special purpose or target group

• public_transport:type=regular regular public transport service (default)
• public_transport:type=replacement temporary services as a means of transport for passengers normally using a different means of a transportation to avoid stopping the service altogether
• public_transport:type=post post bus services that also carry mail, often on rural routes.
• public_transport:type=share_taxi share taxi (currently suggested as route=share_taxi on the Wikipage Relation:route#Bus routes (including trolley bus), but not part of the approved proposal!), should be unified with route=bus
• public_transport:type=on_demand services to be called about 1 hour before
• public_transport:type=school school bus service, only on peak times and not during vacations
• public_transport:type=factory often chartered by factories themselves to transport their workers from and to the factory
• public_transport:type=tourism for tourist bus or train services (sightseeing or historical)
• public_transport:type=commuter public transport service for commuters (with relatively high frequency)
• public_transport:type=high_speed for high speed train or bus services
• public_transport:type=car trains with double-deck car carrier
• public_transport:type=car_shuttle car shuttle trains (short distance)

You can then differentiate the public_transport:type=* by adding the key exclusive=* with yes or no.

Example: School buses that are only for the school children vs. open to all public:

• public_transport:type=school + exclusive=yes
• public_transport:type=school + exclusive=no

• service_period=* to specify if the public transport service has a particular service period

• service_period=normal regular public transport service (default)
• service_period=night public transport service only at night
• service_period=peak public transport service only at peak times

The three latter keys shouldn't be obligatory, if there is nothing special. Renderers should assume the corresponding (default) values.

As always, feel free to contribute and improve this proposal by adding values or changing names of existing ones.

Examples

Reusing some examples given on the Talkpage of the initial proposal:

Buses

• Buses connecting a city to surrounding towns and villages. They might have quite a few stops in the city itself, but fewer than city buses, and lots of stops in the surrounding region. (Alan gr)

Regional bus services which will stop at any stop but tend to have a fare structure which precludes local use. Typical example the Trans-Peak 167839 167839 from Derby to Stockport, Krakow-Zakopane, Bellinzona-Thusis or the Glasgow-Campbeltown service. (SK53)

route_master=bus + scope=regional + stopping_pattern=all_stops

• express airport buses as part of the urban network (Alan gr)

route_master=bus + scope=local + stopping_pattern=main_stops

• express variants of normal city routes (Alan gr)

route=bus + scope=urban + stopping_pattern=main_stops

• long-distance routes with both express and stopping services (Alan gr)

route_master=bus + scope=national with two children for each express and stopping services:

• route=bus + scope=national + stopping_pattern=main_stops
• route=bus + scope=national + stopping_pattern=all_stops

• tourism bus services (AgusQui)

route_master=bus + scope=urban + public_transport:type=tourism

• school bus service, only for school children and at peak times (Singing-Poppy)

route_master=bus + public_transport:type=school + exclusive=yes + service_period=peak

• classical public transport line, with additional stops at the school in the morning and in the evening (Singing-Poppy, see Mobicaps 4)

type=route_master with two children for each 'normal' and 'peak-time special' routes:

• type=route (+ public_transport:type=regular + service_period=normal)
• type=route + public_transport:type=school + exclusive=no + service_period=peak

• public transport service where the full line is on demand (Singing-Poppy, see Resago R61):

type=route_master + public_transport:type=on_demand + exclusive=yes with two type=routes (optionally with public_transport:type=on_demand too) for the two directions

• public transport service where only some stops are on demand (Singing-Poppy, see Flexo F8):

type=route_master with two type=routes for the parts that aren't on demand and two type=routes + public_transport:type=on_demand for the parts that are on demand

• Express services between cities. Nottingham-Derby has an express bus 366750 366750 with one intermediate stop operated by well-equipped coaches. (SK53)

route_master=bus + scope=regional + stopping_pattern=limited

• Express commuter services (e.g., Oxford-London 164517 164517) (SK53)

route_master=bus + scope=local + stopping_pattern=limited + service_period=commuter

• Long-distance coach services such as those provided by National Express in Britain, Riga-Tallinn, Tallinn-Turku, Puerto Madryn-Bariloche, Geneva-Val d'Isere, Madrid-Caceres. (SK53)

route_master=bus + scope=national + stopping_pattern=main_stops

Trains

• High-speed trains (e.g. ICE or TGV)

route_master=train + scope=national + stopping_pattern=main_stops + public_transport:type=high_speed

• Bus service that only serves at night (e.g. 415766 415766)

route_master=bus + service_period=night

• Train service that only serves at night (e.g. 5969072 5969072)

route_master=train + service_period=night

• Commuter train service (e.g. S-Bahn in Germany, see 37315 37315

route_master=train + public_transport:stops=many + public_transport:type=commuter

Rendering

scope=* should be used to change route-rendering at different zoom levels. There could be used different symbols for different public transport service types (e.g. a little post symbol for post buses) or even a distinction between express and normal routes based on different colours. Using service_period=night, it is very easy to render a nightliner-only map.

Features/Pages affected

The other (standard) tags on route relations would not be changed, the proposal only adds some new tags. Nevertheless, there is the need to generalize the tagging methods and therefore:

• service=* on railway routes should be changed to the correspondent public_transport:type=* or service_period=*
• bus=urban should be changed to scope=urban
• bus=school should be changed to public_transport:type=school
• route=coach should be changed to route=bus + the correspondent scope=*
• network=* on cycle and walking-routes could also be changed to scope=*

OSM-Wiki pages affected:

• type=route
• route=coach should be deleted
• Buses
• Fernbuslinien
• Public transport
• Relation:route
• DE:OpenRailwayMap/Vereinfachtes Tagging#Zuglinien
• Hiking

Comments

Please comment on the discussion page.