Let's talk about a local public transp. way "Metrobüs"

General talk
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Im in Turkey/İstanbul. We call it “Metrobüs” because its some kind of mix subway with bus. Its very popular here because of its cheap way of carrying people. think that as you multiplied as bus’s length with 2, and then put it on a fixed line. that is “metrobüs”. because of its structure, it can be added as a subway i think.

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That sounds like BRT system, not subway. Wikipedia article agrees: Metrobus (Istanbul) - Wikipedia

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yeah BRT %100 describes it. but is it matters? its the same logic as a subway or tram have, so cant be added as a option?

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There currently aren’t any sort of tagging to denote, only the infrastructure thereof (highway=busway). There are attempts to officially define a tag thereof but it also is not without its controversies with one user bringing up that the mapping of BRT is “unverifiable” [1] .

  1. The term “BRT” is used liberally in the US but I disagree with this statement in that the distinction between tram, light_rail and subway can be rather muddy at times too and I’m sure most mappers are reasonable enough to differentiation between BRTs in-name only and actual BRTs ↩︎

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Generally we can add two kinds of characteristics:

  • physical characteristics: what it has been built. Is it on a separate roadway? Then it could be highway=busway. Does it have bridges over other roads? Then map the bridges. It looks like this has already been done, e.g. Way: ‪Metrobüs‬ (‪227607794‬) | OpenStreetMap
  • operational characteristics: what makes the bus route actually useful. Tag those on the route relation, like this one. You can add characteristics like: how often does the bus come? If it’s every 3 minutes, then interval=00:03:00. How fast does it go? You can tag it with duration of the trip, for example duration=00:40 if it takes 40 minutes to get from first stop to last stop. When does it operate? Put that in opening_hours.

That is probably not a good idea. Let the subways be subways and the busways be the busways. If you add the suggested tags, data users will see if it’s an attractive transport method for trips being searched.

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