- General
-
Bus Stops
- NaPTAN Data Quality
- How to use the map
- Verified Stops
- Tagging Issues
- Completed Stops
-
Railway Stops
This is document is a work in progress
General
Overview
The aim of this tool is synchronise and validate UK public transport data within Open Street Map (OSM). The UK government has provided public transport data within two dataset under the Open Government Licence, which includes stopping locations of all UK public transport services (Bus, Rail, Ferry and Air) broken down into regions and areas, each regional authority submits this data to a central database called NaPTAN (National Public Transport Access Nodes).
Around 2009, NaPTAN information started to be imported into OSM on a area by area basis's, since these initial imports, the information imported has become stale with many stops not being modified in 11 years. There has been few attempts to rectify this talks of a fresh import but this has been put to the side due to complexities of automating this and determining the correct tags based on what NaPTAN says (e.g. Bearing, Name on signage) and what a user has survived. (See 'NaPTAN Data Quality' below.)
With the issues around automating a new import this tool as been created to make a easy to perform manual check of all stops currently within OSM and to synchronise it with the latest NaPTAN information, once all stops have the basic NaPTAN tags, a survey can be done to verify this and it's location as well as additional useful information such as is there shelter, displayed timetable etc.
Endgame
Bus Stops:
- Validate the location of all bus stops
- Setup a feedback loop with authorities feeding into NaPTAN regarding location, bearing and any other issues on the ground
- Once bus stops locations have been validated, automate the process of updating NaPTAN tags
- Validate the location of all railway stations used by public transport
- Setup a feedback loop with authorities feeding into NaPTAN regarding locations
Sate of Development
Current this tool in development and is being created as a side project because of this it's being marked as 'pre-alpha', nothing is set in concrete with breaking and major changes happing each update. All effort will be made to keep things usable but you may experience some issues.
Once things become more feature rich and issues ironed out the tool will move to public beta then into full release.
Planned Features & Nice to Have's
- More frequent OSM imports, currently daily
- Show bus route lines on the map to make surveying easier
- Survey notes for stops which cant be found on a survey
- Mobile friendly map so it can be used on surveys
Data Sources
Below is a table detailing where data is coming from, its usage licence and how often it's updated.
| Source | Licence | Update Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| Open Street Map - geofabrik Great Britain | Open Data Commons Open Database License | Daily |
| National Public Transport Access Nodes (NaPTAN) | Open Government Licence | Daily |
|
National Public Transport Gazetteer (NPTG)
NPTG Migration API |
Open Government Licence | As needed |
| Ordnance Survey Boundary-Line | Open Government Licence | As needed |
Bus Stops
NaPTAN Data Quality
There are many issues and with the NaPTAN dataset, these include:
- Missing data, e.g. no bearing
- Invalid values, e.g. not being encoding in UTF8
- Stop names not being encoded correctly for a csv file
- CreatingDateTime and ModificationDateTime being empty, text or switched
- StopInArea not matching matching a Stop StopArea
- RevisionNumber not consistent or empty, in one extract it could be 12 and the next day its 0
Most of these issues boil down to data providers not conforming to the Schema and little to no validaion when importing from local authorities into the larger dataset. Some of these issues can be worked around but others cant, when this happens the data is simply not imported.
- Stops
- StopPlusbusZones
- StopAreas
- StopsInArea
- RailReferences
- FerryReferences
- CoachReferences
- AirReferences
These issues effect the consistency and reliability of the data so are not imported into this tool
How to use the map
Ledger
| Verified OSM bus stop | |
| Unverified OSM bus stop | |
| OSM bus stop with no AtcoCode | |
|
OSM bus stop marked as disused. highway or public_transport tags prefixed
|
|
| OSM bus stop matching with an inactive NaPTAN record |
| Verified NaPTAN bus stop | |
| Unverified NaPTAN bus stop | |
| No matching OSM bus stop | |
| Inactive NaPTAN bus stop |
Process
- Add NaPTAN data to bus stops which don't currently have any
- Correct duplicate bus stops with the same NaPTAN data (can be done comparing OSM and NaPTAN data and locations)
- Correct or remove bus stops which no longer match to any NaPTAN stops (Some stops have had their Atco deleted but new stops have popped up near by)
- Survey current OSM bus stops, confirming location and setting survey date also add details like shelter,bench etc. Update to PTv2 tagging if needed
- Survey area where NaPTAN stops said to be present, confirm location and add to OSM
Keyboard Shortcuts
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Shift+A | Join selected NaPTAN stop with OSM feature, once activated click on a OSM feature. |
| Shift+S | Sync the selected NaPTAN stop with selected OSM feature, this opens JOSM and adds NaPTAN tags to the selected OSM feature |
| Shift+C | Clear all currently selected NaPTAN and OSM features |
Verified Stops
highway tag set and has a value of 'bus_stop'
public_highway tag set and has a value of 'platform'
bus tag set and has a value of 'yes'
Is not duplicated with another osm bus stop with the same naptan:AtcoCode
naptan:AtcoCode tag is set, matches a active NaPTAN stop and is within 80 meter radius of matching naptan stop
survey:date tag set and in the correct format ISO8601 (YYYY-MM-DD)
naptan:verified tag removed OR has a value of 'yes'
- The wiki page says to remove the tag once survived but there are cases where its value is set to 'yes'
survey:date is within 30 days of the osm node being moved, this locks the location as 'verified', if the osm node gets moved without the survey date being updated the location is not longer 'verified'
- This is to detect changes in the location without it being surveyed and confirmed on the ground
Tagging Issues
These issues get tagged when a the osm bus stop matches a naptan stop, based on the AtcoCode and the stop being active (act, pen, new)
Does the naptan:Bearing tag on the osm bus stop match the one given by NaPTAN.
- In some cases the naptan data is incorrect and the value set within OSM is correct.
A feedback loop needs to be setup with the authority to get these issues fixed at source.
Don't preform automatic edits to correct these issues!
Does the naptan:NaptanCode tag on the osm bus stop match the one given by NaPTAN.
- This reference is used when getting timetable information via SMS and needs to match.
Completed Stops
These checks are independent of other checks (is valid, tagging issues)
shelter tag is set
bench tag is set
tactile_paving tag is set