Queensland Translink GTFS feed IDs/tagging modernisation/PTNA?

[Fizzie41 (Graeme Fitzpatrick)]

@OrichalcumCosmonaut

I guess website:AU-QLD-Translink-XXX=* would be fine

Do we actually need all that, or is just url= sufficient?

[OrichalcumCosmonaut]

I think it should at least be changed to website=* since URL means something less specific. I guess for stops which only have one ID it would be fine to just use bare website=* (probably also fine for railway platforms since there are none with multiple), but I was thinking that using the suffix even if there is only currently one ID is more fool-proof if the stop later gets another ID.

Stations should just have website=* though, otherwise you’d just have a bunch of e.g. website:*=https://jp.translink.com.au/plan-your-journey/stops/morayfield-bus-station even though the URL is the same for each.

[Fizzie41 (Graeme Fitzpatrick)]

@OrichalcumCosmonaut

even though the URL is the same for each

Is that necessarily a problem though?

[OrichalcumCosmonaut]

It’s not, it just seems unnecessarily verbose to have e.g.

amenity=bus_station
public_transport=station
name=Morayfield bus station
website:AU-QLD-Translink-SEQ=https://jp.translink.com.au/plan-your-journey/stops/morayfield-bus-station
website:AU-QLD-Translink-KIL=https://jp.translink.com.au/plan-your-journey/stops/morayfield-bus-station

when just website=https://jp.translink.com.au/plan-your-journey/stops/morayfield-bus-station would convey the same information in less space.

[Fizzie41 (Graeme Fitzpatrick)]

Ah, gotcha!

I was thinking separate stations all redirecting to the same website.

[Brickblock1]

@OrichalcumCosmonaut

Also, train services on the same line have a different short name for each direction which I’m not sure how to tag, maybe something like gtfs:route_short_name:*=BDBR;BRBD? It looks to me like GTFS doesn’t allow different names for different directions, so maybe we’d have this particular problem even if the feed wasn’t a mess.

My understanding of gtfs is that a route just provides extra information to a trip. which would then not make it incorrect to have different directions not share a route. Riders and other systems may consider multiple gtfs routes to be one line irl, even if they have to be two or more routes in gtfs.

An example of this would be line 27 in Stockholm where express departures use a different line number, 27S. In the underlying data these are the same line, but in gtfs they are not which is fine given the purpose of gtfs, that being to inform a rider of what train to take.

Personally I would add gtfs:route_short_name:= to the osm type=route(s) since it’s the closest but also keep it on the route master in some way to best support applications which expect route_master to equal route.

[Fizzie41 (Graeme Fitzpatrick)]

In reference to:

@Brickblock1

line 27 in Stockholm where express departures use a different line number, 27S

is there a difference reference between the Beenleigh > South Brisbane (& return) express vs “stopping-all-stations” trips?

[OrichalcumCosmonaut]

So far I’ve decided on splitting the route masters into two, because I had a realisation here:

@OrichalcumCosmonaut

Actually, thinking about this a bit more: I’m not sure grouping the train routes by line makes sense. Some of the routes do stay on only one line, but a lot of them don’t.

So the questionable use of a semicolon in a gtfs:* tag isn’t a problem anymore (I think a GTFS ID can actually contain a semicolon, although whether any existing feed actually does that is another question). Some of the routes also don’t have a “friend” that goes in the opposite direction with the same termini.

You can see the way I’ve tagged things so far in the Trains section on the PTNA page (there’s only three so far because I haven’t updated any of the others yet).

What I’ll probably do is create a route=railway relation for each line so Wikidata has something to point at (e.g. Caboolture railway line (Q5015753), which IIRC is currently pointing at the CABR (Caboolture to Roma Street) route master), and just keep each train route in a separate route master for simplicity.

[OrichalcumCosmonaut]

Looking at the printable timetables for the Beenleigh and Gold Coast lines and I’m not really sure (not really helped by the fact the timetables don’t use these refs in the first place). Either way they should have different shape IDs.