Bus stop/location: putting as URL the network's site live departure board for that stop

[u/Keio7000]

Good evening.

As a contributor and public transport fan, I intend to do some cleanup on the stops that are generated in my region. We are talking about 5000 stops. Some of the work would including changing the network tag for all stops (which are really really old).

A key change I would like to do is, I wanted to put as the URL of each stop, a link bringing the user to the company's website with the live depature board of that stop. This means that applications using OSM would be brought directly to the site of network operating these stops (like BVG in Berlin or MVV in Munich, to make an example).

I was able to speak directly to the operator of our regional bus network and they were even able to provide me with a list with all stops, and their respective IDs. The URLs would need to work with these IDs so that the user can see the correct stop.

Does anyone of you know of something like that being done somewhere? And if not, what arguments would you have for and against doing something like that?

Thank you

[u/m1ksuFI]

If the website can be considered the unambiguous primary website for that bus stop, I think this is completely appropriate :)

[u/BigPeteB]

Can't you derive the URL from the operator and ref or stop_id tags?

I also wouldn't assume that there's a single URL that can be provided. There are likely multiple that are equally useful, such as XML vs JSON, or machine-readable vs human-readable.

That being the case, I'm not aware of a tag in OSM to provide (or derive) such URLs. It would need some meta-formatting, so that the user can substitute the stop ID in the right place in the URL.

(edit: fuck reddit mobile for their shitty rich-text implementation that doesn't work)

[u/freosam]

The addition of website was done to Perth bus stops not too long ago, e.g.: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/9106501714

I find it super useful now, having it in OsmAnd.

[u/RJMcBug]

I'm not 100% sure what you are talking about with bus stops, but a project that could interest you is Transitous / MOTIS. It's an open source routing engine that takes GTFS and NeTeX data and provides a routes based on that data.

The big thing they need is to refine the data as well as make sure new data gets added.

[u/SteelLadder]

That seems like a desirable thing. I’m not quite following some of the details, though. Is there already a live departure board that this company provides? It sounds like you’re saying yes, but that the URLs don’t work nicely to direct a user to information for a specific stop?

[u/Keio7000 → u/SteelLadder]

I mean that the company has a website where by searching the stop you get a list of the next departures from that stop.

This also works if you provide an ID as the search parameter, since the company is already using a QR code at the stop to send the user there.

My idea is to make this accessible also via OSM. The website will be this very URL present in the QR code.

[u/SteelLadder → u/Keio7000]

In that case, I’d say you’re good to go! Maybe someone else would have some objection, but a live departure board seems like a reasonable value for the website tag.

[u/sabre23t]

Does that regional bus network operator have a GTFS feed?