Public Transport Plugin for JOSM

Introduction - Examples how to Use - Used Notions - Reference Manual

Introduction
    How to Install
Examples how to Use
    Map a Bus Line from Scratch
    Reuse a partly parallel line
    Reuse an Old Relation
Used Notions
Reference Manual
    Tab Overview
    Tab Tags
    Tab Itinerary
    Tab Stops
    Tab Meta

The JOSM Plugin Public Transport is designed to simplify the mapping and editing of public transport routes according to best practice standards (see Oxmoa scheme). After some installation instructions, we start with a chapter about usage examples: In the first section, we describe how to create a bus route from scratch. If there exists already one or more lines running partly or completely parallel, you can take advantage of this (see second section). Also, you can easily convert routes from older data formats to the Oxmoa scheme (see fourth section). The following chapter explains the notions used along the plugin. The last chapter contains a reference manual of all items in the plugin.

This manual refers to the prototype version of 2010-02-19. It has successfully been tested with the latest JOSM (version 2940). It does not work with JOSM-tested (version 2561) due to changes to the data model. This is still a beta version, so don't forget to save your work before and during you use this plugin. Feel free to make suggestions for simplifications or extra functionality or report bugs to me (mailto:roland.olbricht(at)gmx.de).

The Oxmoa schema consists of a relation per direction and contains the itinerary (the way a bus actually takes from its starting stop to its terminus) and the stops served by the bus. Roughly, you need to enter one direction of the itinerary by hand. The stops and the back direction can mostly be derived from that by the software.

Download the area where your bus route takes place. Choose the menu item Public Transport > Route patterns. This opens a window where you can see all public transport routes existing in the downloaded data set. Create a new relation by clicking on the button New. Now change to the tab Tags and set appropriate values for a least route (the type of public transport), ref (the line number) and to (the destination displayed).

Change to the tab Itinerary. Now select on the map the first way that belongs to your route and press Add. Mark the second item and press Add again. You also can select several ways at once and click Add. If your ways are added in the wrong order or with wrong roles, mark them (click the first entry in the window, then shift-click the last entry in the window) and press Sort. If there appear one or more lines [gap], then your ways don't fit together. If sorting won't solve that then there are gaps in your itinerary and you need to add the missing links or split ways (mark the way, the node where to split at and then use menu Tools > Split Way) if your bus service only partly uses them. To help you with the tasks you can:

• Highlight the way in the map corresponding to a selected entry by clicking Mark.
• Make visible the way in the map corresponding to a selected entry by clicking Show.
• Detect whether there is an entry for a given way in the map: select the way on the map and click Find. Every entry in the current route that refers to that way is marked.

There are buttons Mark, Show and Find with similar functionality in the tab Stops.

You can delete one or more entries from the list by marking them and clicking Delete. You can also move one or more entry by marking them, clicking on Mark (this copies them to the clipboard, like the middle mouse button on X servers), then Delete, then mark the first item before which you want to insert the items and click Add.

Now you can add the bus stops in a convenient way: change to the tab Meta and press Suggest Stops. This will compile a list of stops that are near the itinerary. You can choose up to which distance from the itinerary stops should be considered and whether stops only the right hand side, only on the left hand side or on both sides are possible. Now change to the tab Stops. You can identify the stops by their entries as follows: click Mark and/or Show. Delete spurious entries by marking them and pressing Delete. Add missing stops by marking them on the map, marking the entry before which you want to insert the stop (unmark all entries if you want to append stops to the end), then press Add.

When you are complete with the forward direction, go back to the tab Overview. Then click Duplicate (this adds a copy of the relation) and click Reflect (this reflects the copy to become the backward direction). Review the itinerary in the tab Itinerary and correct oneways passed in the now wrong direction. Then change to the tab Meta and let you suggest bus stops. Review them. Congratulations, you are done with the entire bus line.

The plugin has an internal clipboard to simplify copying parts of the itinerary or the stops from one bus route to another. Data is put into the clipboard following the X server paradigm. Mark one or more entries from the itinerary list or stops list and click the respective button Mark (in Itinerary, in Stops). The objects themselves are kept by being marked on the map. The plugin additionally saves their order and role. You can paste data from clipboard by using the respective button Add (in Itinerary, in Stops).

To do this, first choose the source route at the tab Overview and then change to the tab Itinerary. Mark there the entries you want to copy and click Mark. Then choose at the tab Overview your destination relation and mark in the tab Itinerary the entry before which you want to paste the entries or unmark all entries if you want to append the data from clipboard.

Stops can be copied in the same way: first choose the source relation at the tab Overview and change to the tab Stops. Mark there the entries you want to copy and click Mark. Then choose at the tab Overview your destination relation and mark at the tab Stops the entry before which you want to paste the entries or unmark all entries if you want to append the data from clipboard.

If you have a bus route in an old format, you can spread it with the help of the plugin into separate relations for both (or more) directions. Go to the tab Overview, mark the respective relation and click Duplicate, then Reflect. Now you have a relation for each direction. The remaining task is to cleanup the new relations.

First, mark again the first relation. Go to the tab Itinerary and cleanup the itinerary to contain only the forward direction as described above. Now you can use Suggest Stops from tab Meta to obtain a good guess for the bus stops. Use the tools in the tab Stops to cleanup this list.

Now go back to the tab Overview and select the newly created route. Proceed with the same steps as for the forward direction. Congratulations, now you have corrected the bus line.

clipboard - Beside the operating system, the plugin has an internal clipboard that allows to maintain the order and roles of relation members, in particular bus stops and ways belonging to the itinerary. The clipboard is used similar to the X window system cliopboard: there you copy text into the clipboard by marking it with the mouse and paste it by clicking the middle mouse button. We can't assume that every computer has a middle mouse button. Thus, in the plugin you copy data into the internal clipboard by marking the entries and clicking Mark (in Itinerary, in Stops). You paste data by keeping it marked on the map and clicking Add (in Itinerary, in Stops).

entry - An entry in the list of objects that are members of a relation. Here, the relations are public transport routes and members are stops or stations or the ways that constitute the itinerary. The notion entry is used to discriminate between the relation members (entries) and the objects referred to by the relation members (objects on the map).

itinerary - The way a bus service actually takes. Note that buses or other vehicles can't make jumps, thus there cannot be gaps in an itinerary. For that reason, a line [gap] is displayed in the itinerary list whenever the first node of a way differs from the last node of the preceeding way.

(bus) line - The notion refers usually to all bus or train services that are offered in a certain network with the same line identifier. The line identifier for a relation is declared by the tag ref.

mark - see select.

network - the set of all services that a organised as a whole by some kind of transport authority. Often, the network is the responsible party for ticket fares. It is used to disambiguate different routes with the same line identifier in different regions. In particular, we assume that in every network a line identifier is unique, i.e. that all relations with the same line identifier constitute a logical unit. The network is declared by the tag network.

node - The respective OSM primitive. The only objects represented by nodes here are stops and stations. Nodes are visible in the JOSM main window and a list of nodes as members of the route relation constitutes the served stops of a public transport route.

Oxmoa scheme - see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Oxomoa/Public_transport_schema. This plugin implements a subset of the Oxmoa scheme. We implement in particular here the splitting of bus lines into bus routes. This allows to display the correct order of an itinerary and stops even if a section is passed twice or several times. The extra relations per line number on top of the bus route relations aren't implemented yet because there is no known use case for them. Also, the concept stop_position has not been implemented as it causes ambiguities: if it is placed on a non-oneway, the direction of the stop_position is unclear.

In particular, the data model underlying this plugin is as follows: Every bus stop is represented at its road sign by a node with tag highway=bus_stop which is off the road itself, usually a few meters, depending on the width of the street. Every bus route (i.e. every service with distinct starting point, ending point or itinerary) is represented by a relation on its own with tags type=route, route=bus|tram|light_rail|subway|rail and ref set to the line number or line identifier and network set to the network the line belongs to. The name tag may be used if the line has a name but it won't appear somewhere. The relation contains as members the ways which constitute the itinerary the bus actually takes and the bus stops in the order they are served. The member role of the ways is set to either forward or backward, depending on whether the bus passes the street in or against the direction it is drawn in the map.

public transport route - The pattern of passed roads and served stops by a particular public transport service. A (bus) line usually consists of two or more (bus) routes but there are exceptions: bus services only operating in one direction or bus services with the same line number but different branches.

relation - The respective OSM primitive. The only objects represented by relations here are the public transport routes. They are not visible on the JOSM main map but can be edited with this plugin.

select - Unfortunately, there are different things that can be selected. You can and need to mark objects (ways and nodes) on the map in the JOSM main window. Or you can mark entries in the list in one of the tabs Overview, Itinerary or Stops. The former is usually referred to as select on the map, the latter as select an entry. For the entries it is sometimes useful to know that you can mark several entries at once by clicking on the first entry, then shift-clicking on the last entry. You can unmark all entries as follows: click an entry (this marks it and unmarks all other entries) then Ctrl-click it again (this unmarks this entry).

stop - The location where a bus or train calls. It is represented here by the position of the road sign that indicates the bus stop in the real world. In particular, bus stops are always off the road. This is necessary because buses have doors only on one side. Thus, there are no two-directional bus stops. This is in contrast to railway stations: as trains have usually doors on both sides, a train station can and is often used in both directions.

way - The respective OSM primitive. It is visible in the JOSM main window and a list of ways constitutes the itinerary of a bus route.

• type: Must always have the value route.
• route: Designates the kind of vehicle that performs the service. It can be set to one of the values bus, tram, light_rail, subway or rail.
• ref: The line identifier of the route.
• to: The destination shown in front of the vehicle and/or at the platform to clarify the direction of the service. It is usually the name of the terminus. Compare the tag direction.
• network: The network this route belongs to.

• direction: The destination shown in front of the vehicle and/or at the platform (an alternative for the tag to).
• from: The origin of this route. Usually the first station.
• operator: The company that runs this service.
• color: If the line has a designated color then set this tag to it. It should be either a valid keyword (see W3C specification), i.e. aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white or yellow. Or a RGB value, i.e. a # followed by six hexadecimal values.
• name: If the route has a particular name, then add it here. Unlike ref, this is neither displayed anywhere nor needs it to fulfill any uniqueness properties.