In the UK, to what would you attach a train route relation? (as in my example, the TfW Cardiff <> Holyhead services which I’m adding.)
Tracks – of course.
Station platforms? I’ve seen this done by some, but not very consistently.
Stations? Haven’t seen this done, but would have thought it makes sense.
Anything else?
I also noticed a service named “West Coast C: London Euston to/from Chester (some Wrexham or Holyhead)” on OSM. In some places it’s applied to the tracks in both directions, in some places only in one direction (although I see no clear motivation for doing only one track).
Normally I’ve seen routes only named for one direction, with a counterpart for the other direction existing. Would this ideally be split up into it’s various pieces?
I have considered this before, more specifically the Cardiff-Manchester route, although this is a route I use parts of quite frequently.
The big problem, as I see it is that you are down to almost a relation for each train (service) due to the combination of stations which they call at. I my case I tend to be looking for those that call at Church Stretton as a 2nd choice for journey planning, the first choice is a Manchester-Cardiff train depending on where it stops north of Shrewsbury.
Platforms are going to be problematic, they can be almost anything at Shrewsbury for example. Its not something you can rely on hard-coded into OSM, its important to check at the time. Not TFW specically, but the famous waiting for the departure board to say which platform to dash for at Euston is legendary.
I general I’m not certain how much value train routes add to OSM. We do not have timetable information and most long distance train journeys are not one train/route, they involve connections with other routes.
I am not familiar with the Euston - Holyhead route in total, but do use it sometime between Crewe and Euston. They are operated with double Voyager sets, which spit at Chester. One going to Holyhead, one to Wrexham.
Ok, I see your point about the combination of stations served by a train. For precise route planning, the live route planners will always be the better tools.
But where’s the happy medium for OSM? Maybe store the general route, i.e. the track traveled by a particular service? And assign all stations served by the route, even if not all stations are hit by every train?
As I see it, one of the benefits of even having route information is that some apps visualize them. I’m thinking of PocketEarth on the iPhone, which does this really nicely – if I tap on a stop, it’ll show all the routes touching that stop, each route in a different colour.
I also see why it’s maybe not sensible to hard-code the platforms of a route – but how does one then generally store the information of which stations a route calls at, or can call at? I have to be honest that this is one of the details I haven’t figured out at all – even if the train platform ‘knows’ which routes frequently stop there, I haven’t found anything linking the platform to the station (except immediate proximity of course, but somehow that feels a bit lacking from a coding perspective).
Multiple platforms that serve the same station can be grouped as part of a stop area relation, but usually aren’t.
I don’t know how you’re meant to add a station that a train stops at without a set platform. For PTv1 I’d probably just add the station to the route with a stop role. I don’t know what you’re meant to do with PTv2 as I think it only permits stop elements to be on one of the route ways.
That’s the first time I’ve heard of PTv1 and PTv2. Those are apparently rulebooks or guidelines for public transport in OSM? I’ve found them referred to by name in various places, but never the actual documents themselves.
As PTv2 (as it’s now called) was meant to replace PTv1 they don’t really exist as two separate bits of documentation but are all a bit muddled together. The closest we have for PTv1 is probably one of the pages for the route documentation before the PTv2 proposal e.g. this one and for PTv2 there is the original proposal (although additional things have been ‘approved’ since then). Both versions remain in use.
Every time I go looking at the documentation I think I should try to make it clearer at some point but as the whole situation is a little contentious I’ve generally stuck to minor tweaks.
Yeah, that’s it. Thanks for the explanation. For the stations on the Cardiff-Holyhead route that I’ve just checked, it is indeed the case that either the platforms, or at least some stopping points, are part of the transit stop area. I’ll go through them eventually to check if that’s missing anywhere.