Transit authority tagging

General talk Tagging general discussion
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A transit district or transit authority is a government agency or a public-benefit corporation created for the purpose of providing public transportation within a specific region.
– source: Transit district - Wikipedia

How do we tag it? The operator tag is taken by the company that operates buses, trams, etc.

The network tag may work a lot of a time but definitely not always. What if there are two transit authorities in one city? Those lines are still part of a single network, in my mind at least.

Speaking of network, what should that tag even be? If there’s no clear name for it, should it just be tagged as “public transit in x”?

But back on topic, I think the solution is the creation of a new tag like authority or transit_authority. Does anyone have a better idea for a name?
Perhaps authority might have some more uses outside public transport. I saw some usage on taginfo.

I think that most discussion participants will be biased towards using the network tag because that’s how it is in their city but in my city for example, the authority is just a department of the city office. I really don’t feel like using that as the network.

What do y’all think?

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What’s the relationship between the transit authority and bus company in your city? Can you give some examples?

Transit districts or transit authorities can have varying levels of control over transit systems and services. In my region, some areas are served by separate transit districts and transit authorities, while others are served by consolidated transit authorities. Some directly operate bus and rail systems, while others only own the systems, contracting out staffing and day-to-day operations to private companies or other public agencies. Some transit districts are also in charge of toll roads, as a form of congestion management. Some transit authorities are more like city planning agencies, approving construction projects and funding programs. Transit authorities may also be responsible for regulating private bus services and taxis, without having a direct financial relationship to them.

In general, I think that matters most for OSM is what’s most directly related to the feature being tagged. Ideally, an end user shouldn’t need to think about the owner=* or operator=* that much. network=* is almost like a brand=*, but with the implication of operating as a single coherent network (in theory at least). If the transit authority merely regulates or funds the operator, it doesn’t seem like a good fit for any of these keys. It all depends on the relationships between these entities and how prominent they are to transit users.

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The authority is the Transport Department of the City Hall which establishes the timetables, routes and ticket prices while the tram & bus operators just execute all of that.

Yep, that seems like it.

The reason why I’m bringing up this issue is because another user in the city keems changing the operator=* to the authority, claiming it’s more important to know who sets the routes, and because of some translation stuff it could technically refer to the authority also, but everybody opposed his opinion on the forum. Having a clear distinction with a new tag (because the idea of using owner was also criticized) seems like the best option.
And I guess it could be tagged right away since public transport has barely any support anyway. I just wanted to ask if anybody has a better idea for the tag’s name.

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In Wikidata, that relationship would be tagged as regulated by (P3719), so how about regulator=*? I think this would be preferable to authority=*, which is pretty likely to be used for a slightly different relationship (the governmental authority in charge of a place).

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Do you have an example in mind? I’m struggling to think of a real-world example of a single transit network regulated by two separate transit authorities. If they’re regulated by two separate authorities, wouldn’t they by definition be two separate networks? My understanding of network tag in OSM public transit tagging is that it refers to organizational networks, rather than “all transit in $city”. Are there counterexamples currently present in OSM?

And indeed you have buses tagged as network=Autobusy we Wrocławiu with operator=MPK Wrocław, trams tagged as network=Q1531939 (trams in Wrocław) with operator=MPK Wrocław, and trains tagged as network=Dolnośląskie Koleje Aglomeracyjne with operator=Koleje Dolnośląskie.

What information would you like to add? What do you think is incorrect?

If you can ride a bus and a tram with the same ticket, perhaps they should be part of the same network?

Where can an OSM contributor find what city department is the authority for transit in Wrocław? I searched for a few minutes and I’m only finding MPK which legally seems to be a corporation (Sp. z o.o.) owned by Gmina Wrocław.

Probably the main question: what is the use case for tagging who regulates/designs/funds a route in OSM? I see it answered in your later post.

I would say this determines the network. Other stuff is just organizational detail of little relevance to OpenStreetMap. Who is going to query OSM for which company operates a bus line?

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Do you have any examples of Wikidata pages about public transit with that attribute? I realise that this term could be used and it would probably make sense but I’m just not sure if that’s really the most common way to call it and the best tag name for OSM.

Wouldn’t it still work? If it’s for places and not public transit lines then it could be a multi-use tag like service=*.

I think that some suburban bus lines are organised (oh yeah, organiser is another word) by the nearby municipalities also but they might not exactly be the authority anymore. Either way it doesn’t make sense to put the authority as the network in this case.

maro21 keeps changing it to operator=WTr UM Wrocław. I’d like to add that to the newly established tag instead.

Yeah, this might be a better solution. There is a Wikipedia page for public transport in Wrocław also.

It’s the department of transit (wydział transportu) as stated here and here.

I find it useful knowledge to know who the carrier is. Especially in the case of MPK Wrocław which has subcontractors.

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In general, P3719 isn’t used nearly as often as it could be. I’ve been adding it to items about financial institutions, where previously there had been zero coverage. As far as public transit, this query turns up only a single public transit route, Buenos Aires bus route 154, that’s directly tagged with its regulator. Four public transport systems are tagged with regulators.

Just as I put the regulator on bank companies rather than individual bank branches, I think it would make more sense to tag the system or bus company with its regulator in Wikidata. Tagging the individual route isn’t necessarily wrong, just tangential, in the same way that you wouldn’t tag an individual McDonald’s restaurant with the company’s stock ticker symbol. On the other hand, you could theoretically tag the restaurant with the name of the local health department, and the building with the name of the local building permit authority. But personally I wouldn’t bother if it’s just stating the obvious.

For what it’s worth, Wikidata also has a separate authority (P797) property. To illustrate the difference, my county’s bus system is operated and administered by the county transportation authority, which is governed by its board and regulated by the state and federal transportation departments.

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I think the implementation of this idea would be very unclear. As a specific example from Germany: The Deutschlandticket allows using any and all local and regional services*. Basically, the entirety of Germany would thus become a single network.
On the opposite spectrum, one can buy tickets which only allow a specific route without deviation.
Then there are cooperations, transition areas, state and regional offerings, age based tickets, etc. I don’t think that we should base anything on the ticketing system.
* Exceptions exist

From the POV of a transit user, how would they come into contact with that authority? In Germany, the closest thing would probably be the Eisenbahnbundesamt (EBA), but it basically just supervises the operations of trams and trains.

brand was mentioned and I think it’s a good analogue.
To the outside (which is usually the customers) it should appear as one coherent system. This includes rights in case something goes wrong, ticket issuing for all members of the network, public communication. Operators are responsible for providing the service (and possibly checking tickets), everything else falls on the network.
Technically, one might consider a single operator a network, I wouldn’t go as far.

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To be honest this is essentially my understanding of how network is used in ptv2 tagging of routes in OSM. I think the ptv2 scheme predates wide use of brand tags?

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The authority establishes the routes, timetables and ticket prices, so probably everything a passenger from outside the region will care about when visiting the city.

I must’ve phrased that wrong. My question is what should the value of the tag be? Should it be “buses in Wrocław” and “trams in Wrocław” or should it be “public transport in Wrocław” for both buses and trams?

The usage of brand on public transit is a bit more complicated.

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And yet, I can’t affect any of it, so is it really useful for me to know who sets it?
In contrast, if I buy a ticket, I enter into a contract with some entity, so it’s useful to know who that is. I’m guessing that would be the MPK who also operates the lines.

Either leave it out because a single operator doesn’t make a network, or set the network to the operator, in your case MPK.

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It’s who you can complain to if you think something is wrong with the timetable or routes. I guess I’m glad that we can agree, that it’s unimportant to know this, meaning the operator tag is not the right place for it.

Nope, taking care of the ticket machines and payments is the job of Polish Mint (Mennica Polska).

That’s not an option. The 3rd biggest polish city must have it’s own network. It’s also the requirement to get into NSI and overall a strong connection between public transit and network has formed over the years.

There’s more than one operator so that’s also not an option. And besides that, MPK stands for municipal transport company and a company is not a network.

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So, I thought that you and I are in the EU, so it can’t be that different. This lead me down this rabbit hole, conclusion at the end.

In my area, all local services have a network tag populated with Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV). Random example: Relation: ‪RB58: Frankfurt (Main) Hbf => Aschaffenburg Hbf‬ (‪442964‬) | OpenStreetMap
The RMV is a company, so that doesn’t exclude being a network. However, it’s not an association of transport companies, but one of municipalities. It was created as a result of one of the many german Bahnreformen in the mid-90s and replaced an association of transport companies.

In 2007, the EU passed REGULATION (EC) No 1370/2007. In it, the EU defines competent authorities which take on the responsibility of defining and requesting services, among other things. These are generally municipal governments or other local or regional authorities, though this is mostly left to the member states.
Important for us is that the german municipalities now have to request services which can then be bid on by transport companies, providing a clear separation. As discussed before, german cities already formed associations for this purpose, so they gave that authority to these associations.

Therefore, we have a clear separation between the competent authority which orders services and (public or private) transport companies which provide these services. The contracts between these two parties can generally take on one of two forms:

  • Net cost contract: The transport company keeps all income, but must fulfill service requirements regardless of demand.
  • Gross cost contract: The competent authority pays the transport company per km a fixed amount. All income goes to the competent authority.

For various reasons, the second type is favoured today. This means that contract obligations out of ticket sales generally fall onto the competent authority - thus creating a single unified network.

Back to our case at hand, we now have to find the competent authority from which the network arises. From your own account, it would seem that

The authority is the Transport Department of the City Hall

I found a translation into polish on the website of MPK, so may I suggest:

network=Wydział Transportu Urzędu Miejskiego Wrocławia

Is there a shorthand for it to be put into network:short? I only found Wydział Transportu UMW

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Thanks for explaining the European system. It’s slightly different than what I’m familiar with, but hopefully applicable to the situation in Poland.

Based on your explanation, I think the structure in North America tends to differ, so network=* will likely need to be explained to mappers differently from region to region, even if it means roughly the same thing to data consumers. Most public transportation systems in the U.S. (and I think Canada) are government-run from a rider’s perspective, even if the operations are outsourced to a private entity. The government agency’s identity often doubles as the service’s brand. If there is an operating company, it’s an obscure detail that you’d only ever see on maintenance trucks, if that.

Regardless, we probably shouldn’t tag anything based solely on the administrative area where it’s located, since that would be quite messy for intercity services.

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@pavvv: I took a quick look at the MPK Wrocław website, there’s a link to the transit regulations right at the top. The first two pages state that MPK Wrocław is an operator, carrying out operations in accordance to a contract with the Wrocław municipality. It looks like there is no separate communal authority in Wrocław designated for the task of managing the public transport (as it is the case in many other Polish cities).

So it would seem a straightforward scheme, keeping the key values concise:

  • operator=MPK Wrocław
  • network=Wrocław

Seems it’s already quite a popular tagging?

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And it probably isn’t most of the time but Wrocław is just an exception and the whole thing is just a bit mess.

No, that makes 0 sense as a network. Maro21 wants to put it into the operator and I came into the conclusion that a new tag is needed. Also the correct abbreviation is WTr UM Wrocław.

I already wrote that MPK Wrocław has subcontractors like Michalczewski, Mobilis (no longer since April), DLA, Kłosok.

This network tag is what maro21 uses but it doesn’t sit right with me because it’s not really Wrocław but rather the public transit in Wrocław.
This operator is what I use but maro21 wants to use WTr UM Wrocław – the authority. @Minh_Nguyen suggested the regulator tag.

I don’t know what this discussion is about now and it seems like not everyone has read the whole thread. Let’s not repeat the same cases and focus on these questions:

  • What’s the best tag for the authority? Does anyone have a better idea than regulator=*?
  • What should be the network tag’s value be? “buses in Wrocław” for buses and “trams in Wrocław” for trams or “public transport in Wrocław” for both or maybe just “Wrocław”? In the case of the latter, why?
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Is there a meaningful difference in usage that would necessitate a distinct network for each mode of transportation? My county’s transit authority, the Valley Transportation Authority, runs both a bus system and a light rail system. Even though the light rail system has a different set of stations, line naming scheme, and fare structure than the bus system, they are theoretically intended to function as a single multimodal system. Neither has a special name and logo like you see in some other cities like London, so we model them as a single network, VTA, using other tags to distinguish modes of transportation. We’ve chosen not to overthink it beyond that. After all, it’s the network=*, nothing else, that determines the little icon you’d see on a map or in transit directions.

In the case of Wrocław, how are the line numbers and station names organized? Do any operators repeat line numbers of other operators for unrelated lines? Is it possible for one operator to call a stop by one name but another operator call it by a different name?

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My understanding of a public transit network is that passengers can and do transfer between routes. That’s what makes it a network and not just a collection of independent routes like they have in parts of the UK.

However last time I checked my city got its NSI presets set up to tag network=TTC + network:wikipedia=Toronto streetcar network + network:wikidata=<corresponding to the Wikipedia article> so in practice at least the :wikipedia and :wikidata tags from NSI diverge from my understanding

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No, it’s all one network really besides a small detail that some stops have different refs for trams and buses (e.g. ref=20820, ref:bus=120820 but it’s always different by just a 1 in front).

Maybe that should be changed on NSI so that it’s consistent. I feel like they wanted to have different networks because they’re separate entries but it doesn’t make sense from a practical POV.

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At this point, the only way forward that I see is a written statement from the city administration as to how they refer to the collection of lines.

It seems like common practice to take the name of the responsible authority as the network, so describing that as not making any sense is just wrong.

I don’t see a need for regulator=*. Perhaps in wikidata.