Komunikacja miejska we Wrocławiu – network=KM Wrocław?
There’s already network=KM Kołobrzeg AND network=KMK (for Kraków).
Usually you would add the routes as public transport route-relations and add the operator as operator=bus company and the network as network=Transport Department of the City Hall to those relations. You can also add network:wikidata.
Maraf24 napisał taką ciekawostkę:
ale to stan z 2020 i już nikt raczej nie używa biletów papierowych. Jednak “Wrocławska Komunikacja Zbiorowa” chyba pozostała, więc może to będzie odpowiednia wartość network.
Nie wymyślał bym na siłę takich rzeczy jak “KM Wrocław”, bo jednak nikt tak na to nie mówi.
How is that a network? Think about it.
I already wrote that this value makes no sense as a network.
I think that where a company name or legal entity is used in the network tag, it is intepreted as “the network operated by the company” or “the network regulated by the entity”. It doesnt have to be taken literally as “the network is the regulator”.
E.g. in Madrid bus stops and routes are tagged with network “Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid” which is literally the name of a company (empresa). That seems fine to me, as people perceive EMT Madrid bus routes as a network.
In Sevilla and Malaga, buses are often tagged as network CTAS or CTMAM respectively. These refer to “Transport Consortiums”, legal entities that organise and regulate transport operated by a variety of municipal and private companies in the city and surrounding areas, with a common ticketing and zone system allowing transfers between operators. Again, that seems ok to me - the Consortium is not literally a network, but the routes it regulates form a meaningful network for public transport users. For example, CTMAM is the only identifier on my local transport card, and I have a clear mental picture of where I can and can’t use it.
(In these cities the operator tag differs from the network tag. The operator information is also useful, because some operators issue their own tickets and cards, which may be cheaper if you mainly travel with a single operator).
So it might make sense in your city, if the defining characteristic of what belongs to the network and what doesn’t is being regulated or not by this entity. Is there something like a stored value travel card or monthly card that can be used across the network, and how is it labelled?
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Yes, and it’s called Urbancard. That’s not a name for a network though. I suggested to use brand=Urbancard on ticket machines.
There’s a concept for the network to be what’s located on the tickets so Wrocławska Komunikacja Zbiorowa (Wrocław Public Transport).
The issue with is that this only appears on paper tickets which are barely used anymore as they were mostly replaced by paying with debit cards (that’s the one great thing about public transit in here). This name isn’t used anywhere else though, at least not treating it like an official name.
What most people call the network is actually “MPK Wrocław” or “MPK” for short and since this is a municipally owned company and it has subcontractors which operate selected lines, this could be a competitor for the network tag.
And together with a separate regulator tag it would be cleared up that it’s not MPK that establishes the routes unlike e.g. ZTM Warszawa.
I agree that a payment method isn’t inherently a transit network – it’s a payment network. In addition to a brand or network of ticket vending machines and ticket validators, that would entail a payment:urbancard=yes tag.
In my area, dozens of agencies have signed up to accept a common Clipper card, hence payment:clipper=yes, but the card can also pay for parking at some parking lots, which serve a more specific transit network and are sometimes operated by non-transit companies. Not every ticket vending machine that sells these cards falls under the card’s own brand.
OSM isn’t the place to maintain an org chart. I’d think that either MPK matters enough to transit users that we tag it as the network on everything, undifferentiated, or its subsidiaries matter enough to be tagged as the network instead. The former approach is how name-suggestion-index generally handles multinational restaurant chains like McDonald’s – a Big Mac sold by McDonald’s France is still a Big Mac. With the latter approach, if someone needs to discover all the MPK subsidiaries, they can either use Wikidata or go off of the “MPK” prefix on each subsidiary name.
I don’t know if that should be tagged. If I start adding payment tags to everything, every single route will have so many tags and there’s already quite a few tags that I’ve already added. It’s probably going to be better to put payment attributes on the Wikidata page for Public transport in Wrocław which will be the network. I’ll think about it though.
No, that’s not how it works. MPK Wrocław, the municipally owned company has contracts with other private companies to operate selected lines. Those operators function in other cities too like Warsaw, Kraków, Katowice. In my opinion it is useful to tag them because e.g. some don’t have GPS tracking which makes it impossible to see the line’s position in real-time.
Public transit cards are quite commonly tagged via the payment:*=* tagging scheme. I suspect it’s mainly used in three situations, which may or may not apply in Wrocław:
- The POIs and routes that accept this card also accept other forms of payment.
- This card is accepted by multiple networks or not on all of a network’s routes.
- This card is accepted by things other than public transit infrastructure, such as parking garages.
Sure, the operators would definitely be operator=*, but what I’m still a little confused about is the role that MPK Wrocław plays. Aside from behind-the-scenes aspects like financing and GPS tracking, what are the reasons why an ordinary person on the ground would know about MPK? What would this rider perceive to be the transit network based on station wayfinding schemes, equipment liveries, and official transit maps? If we were to document this network=*, what would the exemplar image be for on-the-ground verification? To put it in crass tagging-for-renderer terms, if a map were to mark each bus stop with an icon that distinguishes it from other services, whose logo would it be?
Not every network=* needs clear answers to these questions, but hopefully they’d guide us to a clear understanding of what goes in network=*. And if the network=* ends up having any relation to MPK, then a separate regulator=* tag may not be necessary after all.
I know how they’re tagged but in my opinion if I tag one method, then I should tag all of them rather than leaving just one. This could make quite a mess with the number of tags added but I might add them regardless.
Urbancard is used only for buses and trams in Wrocław and nearby municipalities and also trains within the borders of Wrocław (with the exception of one station outside the city). This is basically untaggable so it’ll just stay on trams and buses.
If you hear of public transport in Warsaw, you think of ZTM Warszawa, for Kraków – KMK, and for Wrocław it’s MPK Wrocław. That’s the perception the passengers here have. If lines have temporary detours, it’s always MPK that announces them, even if it’s for lines that they don’t currently operate. MPK’s own app iMPK used for seeing the positions of buses and trams in real time shows buses from other operators also. Basically MPK Wrocław = public transport in Wrocław in the minds of most but when getting into technicalities, they don’t control as much as one might think.
Well, stops themselves are managed by another municipal company – ZDiUM (Road and City Maintenance Authority) though soon that task will be moved to MPK. Also MPK takes care of the tramways.
The icon would just be a bus icon because many different operators can use such stops. MPK shares stops with its subcontractors. Actual independent, private bus operators have both their own stops but also the same ones MPK and it’s subcontractors use.
We already established that a separate entity sets the routes, timetables and ticket prices so they have to be in a separate tag because the network does not give all info and because maro21 insists on tagging this department.
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This is a useful insight. Wrocław has a degree of integration between bus systems that you don’t necessarily see in other cities, where icons would actually be useful because of on-the-ground distinctions. If MPK is the reason for this integration, especially in the eyes of the public, at least we know an obvious network=* value for the stops and stations, regardless of who clears the garbage bins and keeps the vending machines in working order.
No, it’s not really about diversity. It is all just one network that’s taken care of by MPK in terms of carrying passengers. They just have subcontractors in order to have enough fleet and drivers. What this changes for the user is that some lines will arrive in different bus model. Everything stays the same except you might want to complain to a different company about e.g. the technical condition of a vehicle.
I guess it would be recognisable if MPK Wrocław was the network=* but I don’t think this would be entirely correct or technically functional with stuff like payment type attributes. I think the more general “public transport in Wrocław” will have to do.
network=KMK is a funny thing, because Kraków’s KMK is a brand name for the network set and controlled by ZTP Kraków, much like in Warsaw WTP is a brand name for ZTM Warszawa, or Transport for Ireland being the public brand of the National Transport Authority…
…and this is where patterns start falling apart.
A random relation from Warsaw → Relation: Bus 106: Ostroroga => Uniwersytet => Mariensztat (13605859) | OpenStreetMap → has both the network and the operator be ZTM, the legal name of the transport authority. Knowing Warsaw, there probably was a widespread discussion to agree on this, but it’s interesting to see that the WTP brand name doesn’t appear as the network, even though if you wanted to see the timetable online you’d go to wtp.waw.pl. The operator is the authority anyway, even though the actual bus company can be one of the three or four currently contracted in Warsaw. Why the actual operating company isn’t provided? Most likely because Warsaw has no issues with switching up operators every few weeks, as well as splitting routes between operators, sometimes to the point of the semi-state MZA providing 13 buses and a random independent operator providing a single 14th bus.
A random relation from Kraków → Relation: Bus 124: TAURON Arena Kraków Wieczysta => Os. Podwawelskie (3153939) | OpenStreetMap → only has the branded network tag. It doesn’t include ZTP Kraków as the authority, nor MPK Kraków as the operator – even though, unlike Warsaw, Kraków isn’t prone to random switching between MPK and Mobilis, and in the 17 or so years of Mobilis’ presence in Kraków as an independent (albeit contracted) operator I recall only one case of shared operation. (Also, the 124 is operated by electrics, which I can’t see changing anytime soon, and only MPK has those.) Annoyingly enough, however, there is a discreptancy between bus and tram tagging in Kraków, as seen here → Relation: Tram 4: Zajezdnia Nowa Huta => Bronowice Małe (223307) | OpenStreetMap → where the branded network remains (but the abbreviation is now expanded!) and the actual operator appears. The same happens in Warsaw: ZTM remains in the network, but the actual operator makes an appearance.
There are generally speaking pretty much only two networks in Poland that have widely (ab)used brand-like names that separate them from the name of their transport authority, and that’s the two networks I’ve just listed.
I don’t think there is a need to introduce another tag for the transport authority (unless we literally make it transport_authority, because to me regulator means something completely different in transport context – a regulator would be the body issuing licences for independently run routes, not an authority setting the service and telling companies to run exactly this exactly there exactly then). Thus I see no reason to make a separate tag. Somebody has said it here, I think, that we just need to see the network tag to mean not the value being the network, but the value being the controlling body/brand of the network.
network=UM Wrocław / network=Wydział Transportu UM Wrocław
operator=MPK Wrocław etc. should do it imho.
@Minh_Nguyen yeah this usage of ‘regulator’ might be ambiguous here. It’s not listed in the long list of synonyms on the wiki. In polish this agency is called the organizer of public transit but I suppose ‘organizer’ fits even worse in this case.
Is any of the names mentioned on Wikipedia better, when a single word or will we have to use transit_authority (two words)? Would authority even mean anything different for the case of public transit? Is that specific usage still ambiguous?
- That’s not a network and is stretching the convention of to expanding meanings for OSM tags a bit too far.
- Other gminas might also be “organizing” the routes and financing them so that doesn’t work because everything should be in a single network.
Of course, no one would simply say the agency “is a regulator” out of context. It was just an attempt at finding something generic enough to apply to other kinds of features unrelated to public transportation, just as brand=* is generic enough that we aren’t limited to tagging it on restaurants. After all, most of the organizations in operator=* are companies and organizations, but we don’t have company=* and organisation=* and limited_partnership=* keys for them. Instead of the organization’s legal form, we focus on the relationship to the feature. But if the primary purpose of tagging this agency on the route is not that they regulate key aspects of the the route’s operation, then regulator=* would be an inappropriate key for it.
authority=* is even more generic than regulator=*. On the face of it, the key could for instance refer to the toll authority that collects payment at a bridge’s toll booths, or the local government authority in charge of a town, or the religious organization that oversees a church. In other words, mappers would quickly cause it to overlap operator=* based on the literal meaning of the word. But we don’t have to read words like “network” and “operator” so literally.
I’d prefer transport_authority myself, because I’m Irish and as @TranslatorPS already noted, the relevant body in Ireland is the “National Transport Authority”.
Incidentally if we are looking for more synonyms for the kind of thing such authorities do, the NTA says it “plans, procures, and oversees” public transport, “develops and implements” strategies, “licenses” commercial buses and taxis, “delivers” technologies and services, and “works with” local authorities to deliver active travel infrastructure. I suppose that city or regional transport authorities (which don’t exist in Ireland) could have a narrower set of functions.
I’m trying to think whether authority on its own might be ambiguous in some contexts. I can see the argument that if it’s used on objects tagged as public_transport, authority can be interpreted as a public transport authority so that doesn’t need to be explicit. But perhaps there would be a clash for, say, train stations that are managed by a national rail infrastructure authority, but have platforms and stops that are part of a local transport network. A mapper might argue that the infrastructure entity makes the rules about access to platforms and is therefore “the authority”.
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Alternatively we could have pt_authority (pt for public transport of course).
Oh come on. It’s literally in the preceding sentence in the post you quoted: we just need to see the network tag to mean not the value being the network, but the value being the controlling body/brand of the network. If I see stuff like Długołęka having tickets only available from the driver and at a separate fare table from Wrocław city – despite being regulated by one of Wrocław’s bylaws – then I’m going to summarily dismiss it from being part of the same network. If I see network=UM Wrocław I’m not going to immediately assume “oh, this route is part of the city hall” (because that’s a logical fallacy through and through), I’m going to assume “oh, this route is part of the network controlled by the city hall”.
To be honest, at this point I have more of an issue with multiple authorities overlapping than with finding a way to somehow differentiating the governing body from the identity (when it’s not necessary). Just the other day I added Lesser Poland’s route A47, which serves (amongst other places) Oświęcim… where triple network and operator tags appear necessary, since Oświęcim not only has its own bus network (MZK Oświęcim), it also sees routes A44 and A47 from the voivodeship-wide network (network=Małopolskie Linie Dojazdowe + operator=Koleje Małopolskie) and route 688 from the Upper Silesian ZTM (network=Zarząd Transportu Metropolitalnego) all on the same stops. You just can’t win.
Sounds like multiple concurrent routes? In general, it is possible to ride multiple bus routes at the same time, just like it’s possible to drive down multiple highway routes at the same time. Or to use a possibly more familiar analogy, some rail companies and airlines have code-sharing agreements, such that the departure board has to flip among multiple carriers representing the same physical itinerary.
We shouldn’t use abbreviations in this case.
What about public_transport:authority? It might be a little long and ambitious but it leaves no space for ambiguity.
Well that by definition is not a network. It seems like what you’re looking for is network:operator but I don’t think that’s always going to be the same as the transport authority. Could it be though?
Why triple operator tags? Is the line operated by three companies?
That’s better, I suppose.
If the network has a name then that’s fine, but if the network has no “brand”-like name of its own then I would suggest that the name of the authority becomes the network.
No, three different authorities using the same stop.
Oh, in that case, you could have multiple network values on the stop itself, corresponding to the multiple routes. We have some cases like that in my area, but usually one of the networks is the dominant one for the stop, corresponding to the operator, so we include it in only one of the networks and rely on route relation membership to indicate the others. In other cases, we map multiple stops because they don’t share a name or stop ID.
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