On 29.03.2015 22:11, Alexander Matheisen wrote: I vote in favour for this idea to avoid a German viewpoint, and would like to rename railway:station_category to railway:station_category:de for this case. railway:station_category and railway:station_importance can thus be used in parallel. For railway:station_importance, I propose something like the following explanations (but I can only give examples for Germany, sorry): *railway:station_importance=local*: The station has importance for a few surrounding villages and/or towns. Some regional trains may not even stop here. (In Germany, this would typically correspond to Bahnhofskategorie 7-5, examples: rural stops, suburbs, S-Bahn stations) *railway:station_importance=regional*: A stop with higher importance, for example a connecting station on a railway junction. At least all regional trains stop here, maybe even some interregional trains. (typically Bahnhofskategorie 5-3, for example Kreiensen [0], Rothenburg [1], or Großheringen [2]) [0]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/51.8531/9.9615 [1]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/53.1073/9.3988 [2]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/51.1059/11.6603 *railway:station_importance=interregional*: The station serves more than only regional trains, it is commonly used to change for interregional and intercity connections. The station is usually the most important one of several railway stops in a city. (Bahnhofskategorie 3-2, for example Göttingen [3], Ulm Hbf [4]) [3]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/51.5408/9.9134 [4]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/48.4046/9.9726 *railway:station_importance=international*: The station is a big hub in the national railway system and serves long-distance connections to major national or even international cities. It usually also provides access to an international airport. (Bahnhofskategorie 2-1, examples: Frankfurt Hbf, Frankfurt Flughafen, Berlin Hbf, München Hbf, Hannover Hbf) I guess this proposal can still be refined, but that's what was going through my mind right now. - Roland

Am 02.04.2015 um 04:50 schrieb Roland Hieber: I think, we should retag, too. The problem now is, that the values combine with Deutsche Bahn category system; but perhaps any other railway company has only categories from 1 to 6 or whatever. Perhaphs something like category_range=1-7 would help (to set the margins). If not, I would favour "railway:station_category:*de*". It is a tag majorly in use in Germany, so the retagging discussion would not be too big. I like this system with human-readdble values. My problem is /*=international/. I understand what you mean with the description. For people that read wiki descriptions, it is quite clear. But I fear, that many people that are not such fanatic railway mappers will just read this one word in the tag value ("international") and tag any station with any international service with /railway:station_importance=international/. Suddenly, Bad Bentheim (http://osm.org/go/0GYWO2k?m=) and Encarnacion in Paraguay (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Estaci%C3%B3n_Encarnaci%C3%B3n,_vi..., there is something like international commuter service) will receive this tag, I am afraid. So, we have to find a tag for stations with international service that don't really have an international importance. or avoid the "/international/"-value. Greetings, Daniel

Hi Daniel, Am 2015-04-11 um 09:05 schrieb danmey(a)web.de: Let's replace "international" by "long_distance" or "national". Best regards Michael -- Per E-Mail kommuniziere ich bevorzugt GPG-verschlüsselt. (Mailinglisten ausgenommen) I prefer GPG encryption of emails. (does not apply on mailing lists)

The problem is that the renderer would need to do a lot of calculations for this, which usually is something you want to avoid as that process takes a lot of time anyway. Walking relations up and down is IMHO one of the last things you want to do there if you can avoid it. Eike

On Sa, 2015-04-11 at 09:18 +0200, danmey(a)web.de wrote: theoretically this could work, but it needs a lot of calculation. Especially for rendering this is would require preprocessing of the data. But there is also another problem: This would work just for passenger stations. A tagging solution would also be appliable on non-passenger stations like freight yards. There are very important freight yards like Maschen, Seelze, Gremberg, etc., but also freight yards in rural areas that are just used e.g. for irregular wood or military transports. A tagging solution would allow us to map their importance too. Same problem for non-passenger stations as describe above. Also the number of platforms does not indicate the importance of the station. See this example: Bonn Hbf - 5 platform tracks - DB category 2 - 70 long distance trains per day (according to Wikipedia) - international traffic with EuroCity trains Neuss Hbf - 8 platform tracks - DB category 2 - just 4 long distance trains per week (3x ICE, 1x IC) - no international traffic (except from a regional express train that ends in Venlo, the border station between Germany and the Netherlands) Zwickau Hbf - 8 platform tracks - DB category 3 - no long distance trains - no international traffic For collisions, relative importance of the stations would be enough. But when you want to render e.g. just international stations in low zoom levels, you need an absolute ranking. Regards Alex

Hello everybody, almost a year ago I asked on this mailing list how to tag the importance of a station: http://lists.openrailwaymap.org/archives/openr ailwaymap/2015-March/000207.html Sadly this discussion ended after a while without any results. Now I want to start a second attempt, hopefully with a draft that we can document in the OpenRailwayMap tagging scheme and implement for rendering stations in OpenRailwayMap. A summary of the previous discussion: Currently we use the tag railway:station_category=1-7 for mapping the German railway station category ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_railway_station_categories), but this is very german-specific. We need a way to tag the importance of a station using generic definitions that are independent from any country -specific categories. Numeric values are not user-friendly, terms are preferred. The importance of stations is useful for rendering. This information is necessary e.g. for rendering only major stations in low zoom levels. It is also necessary for the decision which label is rendered in cases of collision. The importance of stations is also necessary for ranking search results. There are no other ways to distinguish the importance of stations. Looking at route relations associated to a stations could be a possible solution, but is very complex to implement and would require preprocessing. This would also just work for passenger stations, but not for e.g. freight yards. Looking at the number of platforms is also complex to implement and does not produce useful results (examples: http://lists.openrailwaymap. org/archives/openrailwaymap/2015-April/000224.html). Recently I discovered that there is already a proposal for tagging the importance of various features, including stations: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:importance. I like that proposal and suggest the following definitions: * importance=international: * Location and served areas: located in big cities (often capitals), an important node in the international and national long-distance traffic network, is a central node of the public transport network of large region * Traffic: highspeed trains, long-distance trains, night trains, regional trains, commuter trains * Examples: Frankfurt (Main), Munich, Stuttgart, Vienna, Salzburg * importance=national: * Location and served areas: located in cities with national importance, important for interchanging between long-distance and regional trains, used for interchanging between long-distance trains that connect different parts of a country, important node of the regional public transport network * Traffic: (mostly national) long-distance trains, regional trains, commuter trains * Examples: Mainz, Mannheim, Bonn, Freiburg (Breisgau), Magdeburg * importance=regional: * Location and served areas: located in cities and larger towns with regional importance, important for interchanging between regional trains, important node of the regional public transport network * Traffic: regional trains, commuter trains * Examples: Düren, Euskirchen, Lienz * importance=urban: * Location and served areas: located in towns and larger villages with local importance, used for connecting these places to larger cities, important node of the local public transport network, used for interchanging between local public transport routes * Traffic: regional trains stopping only in important stations (Regionalexpress in Germany), regional and commuter trains (S- und Regionalbahnen in Germany) * Examples: Remagen, Andernach, Dormagen, Wernigerode * importance=suburban: * Location and served areas: located in suburbs of metropolitan areas, connecting suburbs and bigger light rail and tram stations * Traffic: commuter trains (S-Bahnen in Germany), light rails (U- oder Stadtbahnen in Germany) * Examples: Düsseldorf-Friedrichstadt, Köln Hansaring * importance=local: * Location and served areas: typically located in rural areas, hamlets, villages * Traffic: regional trains stopping at every station (Regionalbahnen in Germany) * Examples: Satzvey, Dalheim, Brocken, Drei Annen-Hohne This is more a characterization than a definition due to the situation that the boundaries between these categories are fluid, similar to road types in OpenStreetMap. I propose to leave the existing railway:station_category=* tags for mapping country-specific categories like the German railway station categories. Regards Alex

Hello, Am Donnerstag, den 03.03.2016, 23:16 +0100 schrieb Michael Reichert: I think that we should not define too many categories for any special type of station. I think that the difference between importance=low and importance=local is too small to need a separate category. The category importance=sometimes may be a good idea, but even here I think that tagging those stations with importance=local provides enough information for most purposes. In my current draft at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Rurseeka tze/Station_Importance_Draft, I just extended the definition of important=local with the aspects of importance=sometimes. Regards Alex

Hello, Am Freitag, den 04.03.2016, 00:15 +0100 schrieb Rolf Eike Beer: I added my draft to the OSM wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Rurseekatze/Station_Importance_Draft. In this version of the draft, I removed all that international stuff, as this is problematic like you described here. Instead I used terms that refer more to geographic distances and the train network than to boundaries. Regards Alex

Hello Marian, Am Montag, den 07.03.2016, 03:12 +0100 schrieb Marian Sigler: do you have ideas for a better scheme? There are some differences: Suburban stations are located in urban areas, while local stations are located in rural areas. Suburban stations typically have a higher number of passengers than local stations. The most important difference: A suburban stations is typically served by more trains per time interval and have a higher number of passengers than a local station. This problem was also discussed on the wiki discussion page: http://wik i.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Rurseekatze/Station_Importance_Draft I proposed to tag both of those stations with the same category, but use additional information like passenger=* to determine the most important station within one category. I think that this system can be used for other networks, too. It just needs some more general definitions. Some examples how that tagging could be used: Airports: Frankfurt could be importance=continental while Frankfurt -Hahn could be importance=interregional. importance=regional could be used for small airports, lower categories are not useful for airports in my opinion. Subways/Trams/Light rails: importance=local could be used as the standard value for stops. The more important ones within a suburb (e.g. providing access to other directions and traffic types) as importance=suburban, while importance=urban is for important nodes. Higher categories seem to be not useful for these railways. Bus stops: Similar to subways, Trams and Light rails: importance=local is the standard value for simple bus stops, importance=suburban is for bus stops that provide access to other bus lines or tram lines, importance=urban is for bus stations that are now tagged as amenity=bus_station. In Germany, these stations are known as "ZOB". Stations for long distance busses ("Fernbusse") could be tagged with one of the higher categories, according to their traffic. Do you already have any draft? I am interested in your ideas. Regards Alex

Hello Marian, As there are many different criteria, maybe a multicriteria scheme would be helpful? For instance having 3 criteria like * tags specifying transport systems with regular stops or single stops at this station (e.g. railway:station:long_distance = no|single|regular, railway:station:local = no|single|regular and so on) * tag for category considering number of travellers and station equipment (similar to German "Bahnhofskategorie") * tag for dominance specially considering main stations / central stations and important interchanging nodes Of course, this scheme does not solve linearization problem of station importance for rendering. But it corresponds to real-world data. I guess linearization/ordering of stations for rendering could be done by the renderer itself using map styles? Later on, a map style could be changed without changing the tagging. Micha

Hi, Am 03.03.2016 um 22:43 schrieb Alexander Matheisen: This topic is currently discussed at Tagging mailing list. https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2016-March/028896.html Best regards Michael -- Per E-Mail kommuniziere ich bevorzugt GPG-verschlüsselt. (Mailinglisten ausgenommen) I prefer GPG encryption of emails. (does not apply on mailing lists)