Talk:London public transport tagging scheme

Discussion on the end points of the route (2016-ongoing)

Re "Both ends of each route should be the bus stands or depots, not the first or last bus stop"

But the subsequent tables contain no instructions or easily-searchable examples for tagging a bus stand or depot :( I think they probably should :(

TFL is changing parts of some routes to Hail and Ride, with "suggested places" rather than specific stops. There is no physical stop on the ground but they have Naptan codes. It is still useful to map H&R locations and to include them in routes so that the suggested stops can be shown on maps and used for journey planning, but the stops need to be identified as H&R so that editors do not delete them when they find no physical stop at the location.

--Harg (talk) 10:42, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Is there any benefit in including the route to and from the bus stand / depot, as part of a bus route? Surely a bus route logically begins at the first stop position and ends at the last stop position. What happens to the bus beyond those stop positions doesn’t seem to have any relevance to the route.

--Eastender (talk) 12:01, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree -- there seems to be little point. The bus will not be displaying a route or destination when it travels those parts of the route. Nor would an passengers (or editors) be allowed to remain beyond the final stop to verify the route taken. Plus in many cases the bus will not return to the depot at the end of its journey, it will instead begin another route which may or may not be the same as the one it was on.

--Harg (talk) 12:14, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

As Amaroussi, I tagged the whole course of the route because, I used to be interested in trying to find out where they would be waiting before changing direction. I also had more than just regular passengers in my target audience at the time, but also people who wanted to do simulations and more. We could add more information to emphasise the non-service sections but this is a first since I do not know if a standard for non-service sections has been created before.

--Ika-chan! (talk) 14:34, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

The current situation is that some editors have mapped bus routes strictly between the first and last stop only and some have mapped the routes beyond the first and last stop. Although in the latter case, sometimes this arises because the way hasn't been split at the appropriate stop position and the mapping is simply a general continuing of the way, rather than an explicit mapping to a stand or depot. That doesn't seem to serve the primary audience (the bus travelling public) of bus route mappings very well, as it presents a misleading picture of the extent of the bus routes at their terminus locations. I propose that we remove this ambiguity from the current bus route mapping by changing the guidance accordingly. I'll do that in the next few days, unless anyone has an objection. In parallel with continuing to map bus routes on that basis, we can discuss how we might unambiguously map the not-in-service components of bus routes. I can see two possible methods of doing that:

a) Add the ways in the corresponding route relations with new special roles, for example "forward_not_in_service" and "backward_not_in_service". Renderers would obviously need to show these ways in a different format to the regular ways, to distinguish the service component of the bus route from the not-in-service component of the bus route.

b) Add route relations to the route master relation with a new role of, for example "not_in_service", that map only the bus route through last stop -> stand/depot -> first stop. Typically, there would be one of these new relations for each terminus of a bus route, unless of course the last stop is also the first stop. The ways within those routes could be mapped using the usual roles of "forward" and "backward". As above, renderers would need to show these route relations in a different format to the regular route relations.

--Eastender (talk) 16:49, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Comment supplied by Bjohas (talk) in May 2017: Regarding non-service stops. They can be added to the route master. Either directly, or perhaps as part of a site relation.

--Eastender (talk) 01:20, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Discussion on the best way of tagging bus stops along a Hail and Ride section of a bus route (2016-ongoing)

This issue was raised above in 2016 by Harg (talk), but was lost in the discussion on mapping of Not In Service routes.

TFL is changing parts of some routes to Hail and Ride, with "suggested places" rather than specific stops. There is no physical stop on the ground but they have Naptan codes. It is still useful to map H&R locations and to include them in routes so that the suggested stops can be shown on maps and used for journey planning, but the stops need to be identified as H&R so that editors do not delete them when they find no physical stop at the location.

--Eastender (talk) 01:10, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

As of 2018, the evolving solution is to tag the Hail and Ride bus stops and their corresponding stop positions with names that have a prefix of "Hail & Ride". This should be sufficient to prevent editors from mistakenly deleting Hail and Ride bus stops that have no physical bus stop at the location.

--Eastender (talk) 01:10, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

London Overground & Elizabeth line part of National Rail network

Shouldn't the network=* tag of London Overground & Elizabeth line be National Rail, rather than London Overground / Elizabeth line?

These two are just train operators within the National Rail network, similar to South Western Railway or Southeastern. --Miklcct (talk) 19:44, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

This change (network="National Rail") has been made in OSM for both London Overground and the Elizabeth line recently. It has also been changed back, by other mappers, albeit not completely. So there doesn't appear to be a consensus in the mapping community on which convention is preferred. Unfortunately, there isn't enough interest in this page to bring the discussion on this topic here. So perhaps we should initiate the discussion against the changesets of the mappers that have made the changes so far. --Eastender (talk) 21:31, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Names of route relations

There is now a proposal to bring route relations into agreement with “Name is the name only” as practiced for other OSM elements: [1]. Andrew (talk) 19:17, 11 October 2023 (UTC)