Andy from the DWG here. We’ve notices a few messages recently from several people about edits by people saying that they are editing “so that Busmiles” is correct. We think that this may be https://busmiles.uk/. The problems reported about the individual edits include a lack of understanding about OSM tags (understandable; these are all new users and some of OSM’s tagging is a bit obscure - like with e.g. designated) but also things such as marking a section of road as closed (for very temporary roadworks) and not as reopened again.
I’ve created this forum topic and will direct the users that we think might be related to it here so that they can explain what they are trying to do and that we can help them do that with OSM. The current situation is that the community is rolling back edits that are “obviously wrong”, so it’d be good if we can help these edits in the right direction here.
One problem is that we don’t know how Busmiles uses OSM data in order to render journeys om a Leaflet.js-provided background of OSM Carto tiles.
In an ideal world, the Busmiles developer would use bus route relations. Having a community of bus enthusiasts take an interest in these could be a very positive contribution to OSM.
The habit of some of their users to fiddle with access tags in an attempt to tag for the Busmiles renderer has even led one user to set access=yes on the Imber road. That’s been reverted, obviously.
(This is just a quick comment, I’ll write more later.)
For those unfamiliar with that, that is on an MOD range and the current tagging explains the situation quite well. The changeset comment used (“More Accurate”) was also unhelpful
Although I am not entirely convinced that Busmiles uses OSM data directly, either with a routing engine or using route relations, some of its users see the route overlaid on OSM Carto tiles and attempt to tag for the renderer in order to “snap” routes to tiles. I have no idea whether their edits actually achieve this aim, but they are made in the belief that they will.
As an experiment, I logged a journey on TfL bus London Buses route 262 → Stratford from Gallions Reach. For most of he route, it appears to be “snapped” to the geometry of OSM highways. At Beckton Bus Station, this is does not appear to be the case.
I picked Beckton Bus Station as the service roads there received two unhelpful edits from the same Busmiles user, about 6 months apart. The first one changed it from the correct access=private + bus=yes to access=bus + bus=yes.
The second one added motor_vehicle=designated and was based on misunderstanding the meaning to be “designated vehicles are permitted to use this road”, a case already covered by access=private. I have seen (and reverted) edits by other Busmiles users which seem to be based on the same assumption.
Unlike the Pokémon Go inspired additions of imaginary parks and beaches, I do not believe that any of the Busmiles users are intentionally adding incorrect data to OSM. However, mis-tagging access to a bus-only road or a partially pedestrianised high street could cause more serious problems for the reliability of OSM-based routing.
Busmiles creditsbustimes.org as its source for bus liveries/information and live bus information/schedules. The data sources for bustimes.org do not include OSM, although it uses OSM-derived map tiles to display its maps.
I was wrong about OSM data not being used directly.
After reading through posts on the Busmiles Discord, it appears that the problem edits are from users who have a paid subscription and use a “snap to roads” feature. This does use OSM data for routing (now attributed at https://busmiles.uk/legal after I contacted them via Facebook Messenger). I think the routing engine may be brouter, but I haven’t asked for confirmation of that.
I think it would be a good idea to create a Busmiles page on the OSM wiki with some helpful hints for users experiencing problems with the snap to roads feature (e.g. don’t add psv=* when bus=* is already tagged unless explicitly signed, be very careful with access=* and motor_vehicle=*). Maybe also suggest installing StreetComplete?
I don’t know much about brouter (if this is what the site uses for snap to roads), so I don’t know if there’s any way it can be persuaded to prefer bus route relations when processing a bus route.
Despite some highly dubious edits by a very small number of users, I think that in general we have a community of bus enthusiasts in the UK who might be very keen to update public transport infrastructure and bus routes if given help and encouragement.
I think having a page for it could be quite helpful.
I have found the wiki pages for buses to be quite confusing over the years. Some pages are very much on one side of the PTv1/PTv2 holy war, some try to cover both. My impression last time I was trying to fix up (rather than convert) a PTv1 route was that some of the pages had structural issues that people had tried to compensate for with many paragraphs of text but I wasn’t in a position to restructure them myself. I think we could probably get them shorter and clearer while having the same amount of information but in order to do that someone has to be willing to risk yet another very long thread full of old arguments.
One of the users has been quite insistent that a road that is closed until tomorrow should be marked as construction in OSM. I have tried to explain about how people consume OSM data, and that “something closed until tomorrow” really isn’t worth updating as “construction” in OSM.
Some sort of collaborative road status stream could be a useful sister project. Magic Earth are clearly managing to associate live traffic data with OSM data in their app, but I don’t know how you’d cover expenses for an open version of that.
I doubt one.network Causeway (as it’s apparently called this week) is a suitably licensed source for this sort of thing (or for OSM) given that they walked away from using roadworks.org as their public face a long time ago and make you sit through a time locked splash screen about commercial use if you have the misfortune of living somewhere with enough changing roadworks that you check it daily for updates about your commute.
I suspect not either, but to be fair I’m guessing (given the topic) that the source in each case was initially “survey”**, and that the Causeway link was to show to us that “it really is closed for a short period” (which to be clear, no-one doubts).
The way busmiles.uk works (that you probably know) is that it uses car/motor vehicle info/data from what I can tell. So what I’ve been having to do is update incorrect info just before it updates (every day at 3am BST) and hope no-one reverts it in that time. But for road closures, it is really closed (which you’re not doubting) and I understand that no-one would update it for a short time however busmiles.uk doesn’t use waypoints so this is my only option
What exactly was incorrect about the information on various roads in Southampton (Changeset: 152907146 | OpenStreetMap) that warranted deletion of almost every single tag? Every single one of those tags I verified in person.
No, your only option is to get the Busmiles developers to fix their software. You do not have an absolute right to go against standard editing practices in OSM just to get one niche data consumer to do what you want. Can you imagine the chaos if everyone did that?
You may well believe that it uses a car or generic motor vehicle profile for the routing engine used by the “Snap-to-roads” feature. That would explain all the changesets with provably incorrect motor_vehicle=yes tags which I and others have reverted.
Do you have any actual evidence of which routing engine and profile Busmiles uses? In order to help, we really need to know if the problems lie with the developer, a small subset of users, or both.
The edits relating to Bletchley Bus Station look a lot like deliberate vandalism. @MKBE_2 claims in changeset 154595315 that the no entry sign (except buses) at the entrance to Bletchley Bus Station has been removed.
The effect of the Order, which will come into operation on 29th July 1985, is to prohibit any vehicle other than a bus, coach, contract bus express carriage, school bus works bus or security vehicle proceeding in Saxon Street from entering Bletchley Bus Station.
Exemptions in the Order relate to building operations removal of obstructions maintenance of the road sewers pipes, telegraph lines, fire brigade, police and ambulance duties immediate emergency maintenance work on a defective vehicle and in pursuance! of statutory powers.
If there’s anyone near Bletchley who could take a photograph and confirm whether the sign is still there, that would be very helpful.
We appreciate those who have brought this topic to our attention. We want to clarify some points and establish a plan to help prevent our users from inadvertently making incorrect edits.
In short, Busmiles is a platform for bus enthusiasts to log their journeys and gain insights from them. Our service heavily relies on bustimes.org, which aggregates data from various UK transport open data sources.
Busmiles offers a paid tier that includes additional features, one of which is the ‘Snap to roads’ functionality. This feature uses a brouter routing engine based on a modified car-vario profile. Our modifications include support for tags like bus=yes, psv=yes, bus=designated, psv=designated, along with combinations involving motor_vehicle=private, access=private, motor_vehicle=no, and access=no. We welcome any suggestions on whether this tagging is correct or if adjustments are needed, as the documentation isn’t always comprehensive and we’ve implemented what seems most effective.
Most users employ the ‘Snap to roads’ feature alongside custom services, as many of the routes sourced from bustimes.org already include routing tracks, such as the TfL example highlighted by @rskedgell. This reliance on custom routing means we don’t use bus route relations, as users are creating unique services that aren’t standardised.
We agree that providing documentation or advice for our users on how to edit OSM properly would be beneficial. Our users aim to enhance UK bus-related data on OSM, but as you can understand, their approach may not always be optimal, especially since many are new to editing OSM.
Please feel free to respond to this message or contact us directly via email at info@busmiles.uk with any feedback or suggestions.
