travelinedata


Maps

All Europe map of Public Transport

The above extract uses the Route relation tags in OpenStreetMap. By logging on it is possible to edit the map to add bus routes to the road links they run on.

Lists of routes

West Midlands - list of all bus routes

North East

Cardiff

What Bus

What Bus?! integrated bus route maps of London use Google maps as a background.

Ordnance Survey

"It was established that if a Local Authority was displaying its own
data with no route or other Ordnance Survey data, for example bus 
stops, on Ordnance Survey mapping for its own area then it did not 
need a commercial agreement and could provide that functionality under 
the MSA provided that the mapping carried a Local Authority watermark."
- notes of meeting between National Traveline and Ordnance Survey on 26 May 2006.

the reason the OS were happy to refer to the bus stop data as "the local authority's own data" was because it has been collected using GPS devices. It is important that the location of bus stops continues to be collected without reference to OS maps.

"I can assure the OSM community that the Department for Transport has
been assured by Ordnance Survey that they do not claim any rights over NaPTAN
location data - and it is a matter of record that Department for Transport is
the owner of the NPTG database.  Both NaPTAN and NPTG are maintained by DfT as
national databases, collating data from all local transport authorities in
England, Wales and Scotland." - Roger Slevin DfT March 2009  

"OS are interested in the use of data that is derived from maps ie if a map
has been used to create timetable data.  They have route planning fees 
and this can potentially hit journey planners if OS can claim a stake
in the data."
- advice from a Local Authority map licencing officer.

OS notes on publishing OS derived data with other maps as a backdrop (OS password is needed)

Number 10 reponse to UK FreeMaps epetition

November 2009 Government Announcement on Greater access to Ordnance Survey Data

December 2009 Government Smarter Choice Announcement Radically opening up data and promoting transparency

Consultation on Government's proposal to open up Ordnance Survey's data.

Mapping Seminar

SDG provided a mapping seminar attended by a number of journey planner and mapping suppliers and some of the Traveline regions.

We may have seen maps in the journey planner as a nice-to-have feature that you either do or do not have. The workshops focused on the user needs for mapping at different stages of the enquiry and stages in travel. It may be possible to switch on and off different levels of detail to respond to the user need, for instance the landmarks that you need on a map when you are on a bus and want to know when to get off, are very different from the map needed to walk from the bus stop to your final destination. We considered the role of maps in verifying the journey solution, helping the user to build up a mental map of the journey and options available, and visualising the impact of disruption or special events. The future direction of mapping is to respond to personalisation of the enquiry service and deliver maps to mobile devices.

Cartographers from the University of Glasgow presented their work and referred to studies of maps for public transport that are soon to appear in the online journalofmaps

Ordnance Survey attended. Several attending encouraged traveline to negotiate the sale of its walk links information. The walks that contribute most to the improvement of journey planning could be made part of the map datasets, ahead of the national surveying of them by OS. These might for instance include walks that link rail station entrances to the highway network.

Maps created from data

map for route 447

This diagram is created entirely from public transport data. The route from Nedderton to Blyth Bus station was found in a Traveline journey planner. The journey solution involved a change at Red Lion, Glebe Road.

The journey planner gave a listing of all the intermediate stop points. The coordinates of these points provide the route but it would be a jagged line. Therefore the bearing of the stop is obtained from NaPTAN and it used to create a Bezier curve through the StopPoint which more accurately repesents the curves of the road.

The Stop Point names are the Common Names of the timing points along route.

The locality names are applied as the open circles, centred on the coordinates of the locality.

Data for Navigation systems

GPX data format is useful for transferring data to and between navigation systems.

Here are the GPX files for a bus route created as an ordered list of the bus stops the route calls at:

The file can be enhanced by adding mapping points from OpenStreetMap. At the moment this is a manual process. The following example has been enhanced: This data can be converted into many other formats in GPSbabel, and then loaded into navigation systems to see the route relative to the passengers current position, not least to know when to get off the bus.

The routes can be seen as a diagram in OpenStreetMap and the GPX file downloaded:

The routes can be seen in Everytrail overlaid on Googlemaps:

Note how the route is related to the bus stop.
Mapphoto

The routes can be seen in GoogleEarth:

Here is a spreadsheet showing how the GPS file was created from the timetable and associated data.


Manipulating OSM Route=Bus data

Christoph Boehme writes on Talk-Transit: "here are some ideas which might be helpful for you:


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© Traveline 2010, Last updated: 21 January 2010