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Hello!
I’ve been mapping in OpenStreetMap for a few years now, and I believe the current method of mapping routes is quite painful and wastes hours of editors’ times to just upkeep it, So, here is my idea on how we could fix it.

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The Idea

In essence, it is to have just one start node and one end node, the router (using the bus profile) then calculates the route deterministically, with additional points in between added only as needed to achieve the desired path.

For example, in the case above, the route can be simplified from 123 ways down to just 5 nodes representing the path. (In reality there would be nodes at every station, so it wouldn’t be as few as 5)

This approach is;

• Resilient to edits,

• So many times easier to maintain.

I’ve compiled Valhalla on Linux and created a quick proof of concept program showing this can already be implemented (unofficially) in custom code.

… See full entry