Proposal talk:Headway

Headway is the wrong term. The headway between trains is generally understood as the minimum signalling interval: for example, there's a 3-minute headway on the fast lines out of London Paddington (20 trains per hour), but that doesn't mean that 20 fast trains per hour actually leave Paddington. Headway defines maximum capacity, not actual service level. As the block on the page says, something around the word 'interval' or 'frequency' would be better. --Richard (talk) 09:08, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Headway is common in American English—it is defined in APTA’s Glossary of Transit Terminology—though usage on OSM would favour British English terms, i.e. 'interval'.

As a matter of fact, 'frequency' is the number of departures during a time period, whereas 'interval' will be the number of minutes between two departures. In other words, we speak of a frequency of 5 trains per hour, corresponding to an interval of 12 minutes. Bxl-forever (talk) 13:45, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your infos and opinion. I didn't know about the difference between American and British English, but there was an indication, because one user in Orlando/Florida used "headway" intensively for the urban bus services. The tag "frequency" is a little bit worse, because it is used for power lines and therefore harder to extract for public transport. The now preferred "interval" is more exclusive. --Vicuna (talk) 22:01, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree it's the wrong term: In a waterways context in the UK, 'headway' is the height above water level of a bridge, etc: ie, it tells a boatmaster whether s/he can pass safely under it. See https://www.gov.uk/guidance/river-thames-bridges-locks-and-facilities-for-boaters Eteb3 (talk) 16:52, 31 August 2019 (UTC)