Re: [openrailwaymap] Station importance

I don't think that the proposal in this way works. I would have something in mind that is something like the "dominance" of mountains: how important that station is compared to the surrounding area. "My" biggest station is Hannover Hauptbahnhof, which according to Wikipedia is the 6st biggest station according to passenger movements in Germany. But it wouldn't really fit here because there are very few international connections because Hannover is so central in Germany. On the other hand you have many international traffic if you are close to the border (e.g. Saarbrücken), which has only ~10% of the passenger movements of Hannover. I don't know if you have any international connections running from any station in New York because the USA are itself that big. You will not find any international traffic in entire Japan. There is little highspeed traffic in the USA, at least when measured with European scales. So even if international traffic is only one aspect the name is IMHO a bad idea. A station in the highest category would IMHO: -be served from the trains of all categories available in that country (required) -allow interchange between highest category trains traveling to different directions, -or is the end point of multiple of those lines -is used by several million people per year, the number needs to be discussed to account e.g. for extremely dense populated areas like China -is the most important station of a greater are, depending on how densely populated that are is, e.g. Cologne and Düsseldorf are quite close, but both important, Hannover of similar passenger count is the biggest station in at least 100km radius Just from a German view, both Hamburg Hauptbahnhof and Altona are "category 1", but Altona is big only for reasons of train movements. Berlin has 4 cat 1 stations, but the outer 3 are discussable of being important enough to deserve a place in the most important category. Greetings, Eike