For instance, the sign at this bus stop reads “Jersey Road”. In the NaPTAN dataset, its Common Name is “Jersey Road Hornchurch”, presumably to disambiguate from other Jersey Roads elsewhere.
On one hand using the local name is probably more recognisable for people using the map for navigation; on the other the national name is probably better for querying.
Is there any consensus around this?
I’ve tried to use “what it says on the sign” for name. There are other fields, such as naptan:CommonName for the components of the NaPTAN name.
As an aside on names, I’ve also recorded names used by bus companies on displays and in announcements where they differ from name (such as here and here). That happens quite often.
As an aside, does Naptan in any way give a precise location (lat lon, NGR, etc)?
I’ve only found “Main Street | Uffington | North-East” (street | locality | direction of bus travel). Maybe that’s as good as it gets.
Yes, each stop has a location and various third party maps and apps can be used to view them. For example, here is the bus stop at the top of this thread in bustimes.org’s visualisation of that data. However, “a precise location” doesn’t always mean “where the bus stop actually is” - it may have moved, or NaPTAN may never have been correct in the first place. As an example of this the southbound stops here were moved down the road. The update in OSM happened within a couple of days of the move in real life, but NaPTAN and even the buses themselves** haven’t been update with the new stop locations.
** when stopping at the new locations the audio and video announcements say the bus is on its way to the next one.
I’ve found up to 4 names used for bus stops. The name on the stop, the name in BODS, and the names used by two different bus companies. Potentially there are more. It’s a bit of a minefield. And bear in mind that local transport authorities do a daily upload to BODS, can change any bus stop name on a whim, and don’t have any formal process either for doing this or informing anyone they’ve done it. For practical purposes it seems to me best to use the name you get on the NSI display and audio announcements. Which means travelling the route regularly to pick up changes!
When there are 4 different ‘valid’ names I would be going for the name on the stop. And yes you do point out a valid problem which I can attest to having travelled a lot recently on my local buses.
The conundrum I have is that in a local village there are bus stop signs written ‘Both Directions’ on the sign but BODS and the buses use the BODS name. However there is one sign and two stops, the stops being in NaPTAN as separate entries. I have created two bus stops in OSM with the NaPTAN derived names.
Oh the joys of naming conventions!