Over the past few years, I’ve been mapping a lot of bus stops and routes. Over the past few months I’ve been looking around how it’s done in other places around the world.

What I find (this may of course be influenced by what I wanted to find) is that most bus stops start out as a node next to the way, tagged highway=bus_stop, usually with a name on it.

Then somebody comes along, who glues it to the way. Then somebody else comes along who maps a platform next to the way, using a way, copying all the tags over. They do this regardless of the whether a platform actually exists. They think they need this to add 2 objects per stop to the route relations. Somehow the wiki convinces them of the need for this.

Mapping platforms as ways where there aren’t actual platforms feels wrong to me. Adding a set of details to more than one object also doesn’t feel like the most sensible thing to do. Adding 2 objects to each route relation for 1 real life object makes working with these route relations harder to do.

I’d like to see that a casual mapper can start out mapping a bus stop as a node next to the way, as highway=bus_stop.

Possibly they add public_transport=platform to this node. It seems odd to do so, even if no platform is there, but that’s how things evolved. Tagging it as public_transport=platform means that a role platform will be assigned to it in the route relation. (if the route relation has public_transpot:version=2). It’s the answer I got when I asked the question a few years back on the mailing list. I usually put that node more or less where the pole is. But the exact position is not all that important, as long as it’s more or less where passengers will be waiting.

As far as I’m concerned this node is what represents the bus stop at this side of the street, so it seems obvious that this is the node that should be added to the route relations. The nice thing about doing it that way, is that there is no need to transfer details or relation membership from one object to another. This node is there for the lifetime of the stop. One object to work with, containing all the details, including directly available coordinates.

Now the stop_position nodes. First off, I don’t see a need to map all of them and since where I map bus lines they are not all present, I don’t see why we would add any of them to the route relations. No need to repeat the stop’s details on them either.

Then the platform ways. If there are actual platforms, I would tag them highway=platform/public_transport=platform. Nothing more, nothing less. No need to add them to the route relations.

Then the stop_area relations. This is where we get the chance to indicate which platform node(s) belongs to which stop_position node(s) (if mapped) and which platform way (if present). Doing it this way means to have such relations for each group, where a group is the ones on one side of the road or the ones belonging to 1 platform in a bus station. They can then be grouped in a hierarchy of stop_area_group relations, although this is only needed for the more complex ones and for bus stations.

Sometimes I wonder if I should create a proposal for this. Usually I give up before even getting started, as I know how hard it is to convince anyone in the OpenStreetMap universe, once they are set in their ways. Little by little I’m starting to build the courage to go ahead with it after all. Writing these diary entries is a small first step, also to see if there would be support for such a simpler way of mapping public transport.

Also don’t get me wrong, it’s still possible to fill in all the detail of the accomodation surrounding the bus stops, but in a way that builds further on what was mapped previously, instead of converting from one object type to another or needing to add details more than once.