On 2016-06-21 00:27, Paul Johnson wrote:
On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 10:51 PM, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org>
wrote:
On 2016-06-20 16:18, Paul Johnson wrote:
On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 2:02 PM, Stephen Sprunk
<step...@sprunk.org>
wrote:
The situation with GTFS data itself is so bad that Google stopped
offering Navigation for the transit mode in it's own Maps service.
It's still available where I live and several other major cities I
checked, so perhaps they just disabled it in your area because they
recognized the GTFS data there was so bad?
I mean the realtime, stop-by-stop navigation that was formerly
offered. Even in areas with really good GTFS feeds, this
functionality is Just Gone. ... it doesn't follow you in realtime
or take into account when your trip's fallen off schedule and won't
make a transfer now. Nor will it warn you your stop is coming up.
Ah, I never thought to try that since transit here is reliable enough to
set your watch by, so a static schedule is all I've ever needed.
I found a couple transit-specific apps, but they refuse to work until
I'm within some minimum distance of a stop. In particular, they won't
tell me when I need to be _at_ the nearest P&R station until after I'm
_already there_, and with off-peak headways of up to an hour, I don't
want to arrive too early. Google Maps will tell me when the next few
trains are leaving (and how long it'll take to drive there in current
traffic) so I know _when_ to leave home.
I'm not sure what the solution is, though, so I've been putting the
stop positions at the center of the platform until someone tells me
better. FWIW, that seems to be what folks in other cities have
done--if they mapped any stop positions at all.
Portland tends to put the stop position where the lead cab of the lead
car will line up. However, Portland hits me as a little odd (in terms
of west coast light rail systems) in that there
Here, at stations where passengers either enter the platform from both
ends or from the middle, trains stop so the center of the train is in
the center of the platform, which means the cab's position varies with
the train's length. At stations where passengers enter the platform
only from one end, trains stop so the front or rear (depending on
direction) of the train is at that end of the platform.
For the former, it makes sense to put the stop_position in the middle.
For the latter, perhaps I should put it at/near the relevant end
instead? If it matters at all.
It's always baffled me that so many agencies are willing to give the
same designation to different routes just because they share several
stops. ...
Part of the reason we _need_ transit navigation apps (and reliable
route/schedule data to feed into them) is to hide this sort of
complexity from users.
Or obviate it. Sight unseen, just trying to make sense of the
situation based on just a map and what stops are handy, there's no way
I'd figure this out for Tulsa's 101 Suburban Acres route. Every other
trip alternates which way the route goes through the eponymous
neighborhood, so depending on which half hour it is, you might need to
walk to one end of the neighborhood or the other to catch the bus. Or
wait up to an hour instead. And then some trips make side trips to a
clinic (during it's business hours) and some trips make an additional
side trip to a alzheimer's treatment community (based on some
arbitrary criteria, possibly when the patients are allowed to come and
go).
Exactly. While a regular rider of the route can figure it out, or may
pick up a map/schedule for offline planning, the casual or tourist rider
will be baffled and is likely to end up in the wrong place. Most
drivers I've talked to are very helpful, but there's only so much they
can do if you get on the wrong bus aside from leave you on the side of
the road praying for the right bus to come along before you get
heatstroke, frostbite, etc. One simple mistake can easily cost you an
extra hour or two of travel time.
- How to obtain a name of a station?
How is this complicated?
A lot of cities name stops without signposting the name, often in the
form of "The Street The Route Is On at The Cross Street We're Stopping
At", such as "South Memorial Drive at East 56th Street" or some
similar pattern.
Oh, sorry. I was assuming a decent GTFS feed, where every stop
should have an official name, even if it's only cross-streets (typical
for bus stops). I thought the question was where to put that it in
OSM and/or where renderers should look for it.
Yeah, GTFS assumes every stop is named, even though this assumption is
outright broken even in GTFS's hometown of Portland beyond just naming
the intersection or block number ("6300 Block Southwest Murray
Boulevard" as a hypothetical name example of a stop not near a
corner).
That's how nearly all bus stops here are named, aside from those part of
complex bus/rail stations that tend to have multiple bays/platforms. I
don't see the problem with that.
It's when you get to those complex stations that you run into questions
of naming the individual pieces vs the station as a whole, but it still
doesn't seem that difficult until you get to rare cases, e.g. multiple
stations that have grown together into one confusing, amorphous blob.
S
--
Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
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