Question about the name of bus stops in bus stations (TEC) / Question sur les noms des arrêts dans les gares de bus (TEC)

Communities België / Belgique / Belgien (Belgium)
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Hello,

Why were the bus platform numbers removed from the name tag on TEC bus stops? Does having the same text twice (under ‘name’ and ‘name:operator:TEC’) cause technical problems?

I couldn’t find anything on it in the Belgian wiki.

Having 6, 10 or even 20 bus stops with the exact same name is useless when looking for a specific platform to get on your bus.

I found out it’s possible to locate a platform by searching for its number in OSM, but it’s not really friendly or intuitive. Always displaying the platform number seems to me, to be as important as showing housenumbers or streetnames, which is standard.

Example of “problem”

Formerly:

Name =Gare de Braine-l’Alleud - quai 1

Name= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud - quai 2

Currently :

Name= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud

name:operator:TEC= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud – quai 1

Name= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud

name:operator:TEC= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud – quai 2

Bonjour,

Pourquoi les numéros des quais ont-ils été retirés des noms (‘name’) des arrêts de bus TEC? Est-ce qu’avoir deux fois le même texte (dans ‘name’ et ‘name:operator:TEC’) pose des problèmes techniques?

Je n’ai rien trouvé à ce sujet sur le wiki belge.

Voir 6, 10 voire 20 arrêts avec le même nom ne sert à rien quand on cherche (en dernière minute évidemment) le quai d’où partira son bus.

J’ai fini par découvrir que l’on pouvait obtenir l’information en effectuant une recherche incluant le numéro du quai, mais ce n’est pas intuitif. Il me semble qu’afficher le numéro de quai directement sur la carte est aussi important que d’afficher le numéro des bâtiments ou le nom des rues.

Exemple du “problème”

Avant :

Name =Gare de Braine-l’Alleud - quai 1

Name= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud - quai 2

Maintenant :

Name= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud

name:operator:TEC= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud – quai 1

Name= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud

name:operator:TEC= Gare de Braine-l’Alleud – quai 2

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I see the same in Flanders.

I think the idea is that conceptually they would be the same stop with the same name, like bus stops in different directions have the same name too, and not “Bommelskonten Kerk (noordwaarts)” en “(zuidwaarts)”.

But I find that silly and unpragmatic. I too want the platform numbers back. A generic name can go on the relation grouping the different platforms.

/cc @multimob

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As far as I know, platform numbers are tagged with local_ref=*. Example: Leuven Station perron 1. This is rendered correctly in many applications and easier to maintain as there’s no data duplication.

This isn’t the only clean-up done in OSM bus stop names vs. the original ones, spelling gets corrected too: for example, Leuven J.Stasstraat becomes Leuven Jan Stasstraat.

4

It looks like tagging all the bus platforms with the same name is an unofficial Belgian rule in OSM then.

I often end up on the wrong side of the road, but at least there’s a 50% chance of getting it right. Since bus stops are often shared by several lines, adding a “Northward” or an equivalent to distinguish them would inevitably cause some confusion since many people would not, in fact, be going North, but it would have some nice advantages as well.

That explains the “name” change then, thank you for solving that mystery!

I usually use OSM directly without an external app, so I didn’t see that, for many people, platform numbers were visible.

5

To sum up for future reference: the “name” tag of bus stops should not contain the platform number because renderers/external apps would then display it twice.

In OSM, the name of the bus stop is based on the tag “name” and the platform number is therefore not visible.

Example in OSM

local_ref=10

name=Braine-l’Alleud Gare

name:operator:TEC=BRAINE-L’ALLEUD Gare - Quai 10

Name displayed in OSM: Braine-l’Alleud Gare

In (some) external apps /renderers, the name of the bus stop is based on the tags “name” and “local_ref” ensuring that platform numbers are always visible.

Example in renderer/external app

local_ref=10

name=Braine-l’Alleud Gare

name:operator:TEC=BRAINE-L’ALLEUD Gare - Quai 10

Name displayed in renderer: Braine-l’Alleud Gare 10