Hi,

Am 2015-04-02 um 04:50 schrieb Roland Hieber:

On 29.03.2015 22:11, Alexander Matheisen wrote:

...

Or should we create a new tag a tag like railway:station_importance=* with some category values such as local/regional/international/... and leave the existing railway:station_category=* tag for mapping country-specific categories?

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):

I would avoid retagging railway:station_category as railway:station_category:de because there is no need to retag all stations and halts and because there is no conflict to other tags.

*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])

*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])

*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 agree this system but I suggest to introduce two additional levels. Not only train stations are tagged with railway=station. This tag is also used for subway stations (often together with station=subway). Almost a year ago I have been asked by Mentz DV if there is a differentiation between minor and major tram stops. There is no one at the moment (you have to count the route relations whose member the stations is). That's why I suggest to extend this tag to every station/halt where a railway-like vehicle stops.

*railway:station_importance=minor_urban*: The station is not served by trains (i.e. only by subways, light rails and/or trams). Stations of this importance are only few hundreds of metres apart from each other. There is no change to other subway/light_rail/tram lines possible there. Change to bus lines may be possible there. Examples: Plieninger Straße in Stuttgart [5], August-Bebel-Straße in Kalrsruhe [6]

[5] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/48.72436/9.15693&layers=T [6] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/49.02436/8.37735&layers=T

*railway:station_importance=major_urban*: The station has importance for a subway, light rail or tram transport system. The station is only few hundreds of metres apart from the next station of this category or the category minor_urban. There is change to other subway/light_rail/tram lines and (optional) to buses and trains possible there. Examples: Möhringen Bahnhof in Stuttgart [7], Neumarkt in Cologne [8]

[7] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/48.73078/9.14852&layers=T [8] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/50.93609/6.94824&layers=T

*Other Examples* Stuttgart Nord, aka Stuttgart Nordbahnhof would be "regional" because the S-Bahn to Weil der Stadt, Bietigheim-Bissingen and Backnang stops there. http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/48.80352/9.19036&layers=T

Berlin Warschauer Straße would also be "regional" because Berlin S-Bahn runs far out of Berlin (e.g. Strausberg Nord). http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/52.50642/13.45119&layers=T

Best regards

Michael

Am Samstag, 11. April 2015, 09:05:41 schrieb danmey@web.de:

Am 02.04.2015 um 04:50 schrieb Roland Hieber:

...

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):

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.

The problem is not the key, the problem is the value. Having a tag that will be used only in one country is IMHO nonsense. Just stick with railway:station_category and change the values to de:1 or even de-DB:1. That's what we do for signals anyway.

Eike

Hi Daniel,

Am 2015-04-11 um 09:18 schrieb danmey@web.de:

this second mail is to think about other ways to determine the importance of a station without any specific tag. I have to say that I have no idea about how difficult it is to render a map and define render rules. So throw eggs if these ideas are not really thought through...

One way to define the importance of a station could be to have a look a the route relations. How many different route relations are conected with the stop_positions of the station? Do these relations have a range of service tags (from commuter to long_distance?) Perhaps we could define a system to evaluate this.

A different way could be the number of platforms: more platforms means higher importance. Either with the platform*s*-Tag (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:platforms). But it is not in really wide use. I don't use it, either. But there could be a way to determine the number of platforms through the stop_area relation.

The stop_area does not have to fit to the operating site from infrastructure point of view. It is hard to tell most mappers that Berlin Central Station should have three stop area relations because it consists out of three operating sites (Berlin Hbf tief (platforms 1–8, S Berlin Hbf (Lehrter Bf., platforms 9+10 used by S-Bahn), Berlin Hbf (platforms 11–14).

If a station is partly on a bridge and partly not, platforms might be splitted. The same occurs if parts of a platform are paved and parts only covered by dirt or grass (many small stations, e.g. Darmstadt-Süd).

Of course, you can show me a lot of examples where a station with few route relations / platforms has higher importance than another station with more of these.

If you count route relations, you also need a frequency=* tag. What if a station is served by 8 intercity lines which only run ever 120 minutes or only once a day?

Best regards

Michael

[TLDR] I'm in favor of railway:station_grade while keeping the usage of numbers as gradations

Good evening everyone,

as this is my very first post to the mailing list, I'll use the opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Jeroen Wegdam (etwa wie 'Jerun Weckdamm' in Deutsch). I'm Dutch, live in the Netherlands and I study railway engineering. The last part explains my interest in ORM. I hope that my knowledge of railway technology and of the Dutch systems will come in handy. The good news is that I can read German very well. The bad news is that my German grammar is terrible; which makes me prefer to write back in English. ;)

Regarding the mail's subject, I'd like to propose 'railway:station_grade'. This because grade is a little bit more specific; category could also be 'station used for events' for example. 'Grade' really depicts the existence of a certain gradation of importance-levels between stations.

For the possible grades I think that we could actually still use numbers. I don't see how different systems per country (e.g. the Netherlands has 5 levels) would cause problems. As long as they are well-defined on the wiki, mappers will know how to handle them.

Concluding, to give you guys more reference material, I'll describe the Dutch gradation. It is based on the trains that stop at the station; stations with level 3 for example are served by levels 3 and lower. Stations with level 1 are served by all trains. The train service levels are:

1. Intercity Direct / Thalys / ICE (Eurostar will be added in 2016) 2. Intercity services (Amsterdam-Berlin treated like intercity) 3. Regional services (category 2 with a few extra stops) 4. Sprinter services (local trains) 5. Event services (e.g. ice skating arena Thialf)

Best regards, Jeroen

Op 11 apr. 2015 om 15:02 heeft Alexander Matheisen AlexanderMatheisen@ish.de het volgende geschreven:

...

On Sa, 2015-04-11 at 09:18 +0200, danmey@web.de wrote: this second mail is to think about other ways to determine the importance of a station without any specific tag. I have to say that I have no idea about how difficult it is to render a map and define render rules. So throw eggs if these ideas are not really thought through...

One way to define the importance of a station could be to have a look a the route relations. How many different route relations are conected with the stop_positions of the station? Do these relations have a range of service tags (from commuter to long_distance?) Perhaps we could define a system to evaluate this.

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.

...

A different way could be the number of platforms: more platforms means higher importance. Either with the platform*s*-Tag (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:platforms). But it is not in really wide use. I don't use it, either. But there could be a way to determine the number of platforms through the stop_area relation.

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

...

Of course, you can show me a lot of examples where a station with few route relations / platforms has higher importance than another station with more of these. But as far as I understand the question, the problem is a render problem in cases of collision. This happens with a small number of stations per case. So, we don't need absolute importance of stations here, but a relative ranking of these few stations.

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 _______________________________________________ Openrailwaymap mailing list Openrailwaymap@openrailwaymap.org http://lists.openrailwaymap.org/lists/listinfo/openrailwaymap

Hi,

Am 03.03.2016 um 22:43 schrieb Alexander Matheisen:

• 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

I would add two additional categories:

* importance=low: * Location and served areas: small stops where most trains (even local trains) do not stop apart form a few "alibi trains" [1] (usually in the early morning and/or late evening) * Traffic: few regional trains stopping at every station * Examples: Rosenberg (Baden), Rammingen (Württemberg), Unadingen

* importance=sometimes * Location and served areas: stops which are either only served by irregular running historic trains on preserved lines or only on special (large) events * Traffic: only historic trains / anything between two trains per day and multiple per minute * Examples: Gerstetten (?), Welzheim

Best regards

Michael

[1] Usually two trains (one per direction) which only run to serve an obligation of service (national railway companies are sometimes force to serve a line althought the do not really want it).

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.

• 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

"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

Hi,

I also wanted to note that "international" is a bad category (Hannover is a good example). Good that you already changed it, but I still think the criteria are too much based on territories.

I think we should go more in that "dominance" direction, in particular, we need to get rid of the "Bahnhofskategorie" thinking. This is a categorization scheme that rather aims at a station's traveler infrastructure, not its relative significance.

One example where your suggestion is too close to that Bahnhofskategorie thinking: I don't see any difference between "suburban" and "local", except where they are. This is not important for the aim of this categorization.

Also, we'd need some way to differentiate Basel Bad Bf from Basel SBB, Berlin/München Hbf from Ostbahnhof, København C from Nørreport. In each of these examples, both mentioned stations have international traffic, but one is definitly to be displayed at a lower zoom level than the other.

There's another problem that has not been mentioned yet: The scheme is only aimed at railway networks, but we would want such a system for underground networks, too, for example. And also for airports and bus stops [1]. (Note that the importance of stations from different systems is not strictly hierarchical: I would want to see an important underground exchange station at a lower zoom level than some regional train stop; and some important bus node earlier than a small underground stop.)

I'm thinking about a how to define a scheme that can cover all of this, but I want to go to bed now, so I'll do that tomorrow, but already send this mail to avoid people considering the discussion over ;)

Marian

[1] Yes, that lies outside the scope of openrailmap, but there's the same problem when rendering a transit map, so we should develop a solution that fits them all.

Hi Alex,

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.

I meant to say there are no differences between these two that are important in terms of station dominance. (Sure there are differences, but they are not relevant for the zoom level display thing we're discussing at the moment, and neither for related things like search result ordering) In other words: I don't see any reason to treat two stations differently only because one is inside town and the other one is not.

...

Also, we'd need some way to differentiate Basel Bad Bf from Basel SBB, Berlin/München Hbf from Ostbahnhof, København C from Nørreport. In each of these examples, both mentioned stations have international traffic, but one is definitly to be displayed at a lower zoom level than the other.

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 don't think it's a good idea to rely on data like this which is not always easy to acquire (think of bus stations etc), and is probably not measured the same way in different places etc. I think even without knowing passenger counts we humans know quite well how important stations are relative to another, we just need a good way to store this information.

Marian

Hi everyone,

Sorry, I forgot this.

My idea is the following.

There's two main points that this suggestion tries to allow, in addition to what has been proposed

a) We would not want other systems just to be defined as "below" the railway one. For example, I'd like to see an important underground interchange station earlier [1] than some unimportant regional train stop; and some small underground station should be shown later than an important bus node.

b) We need rather identical schemes for several systems: Airports, long distance trains, long distance buses, regional trains, regional buses, suburban rail systems, fast urban rail systems (underground), slow urban rail systems (tram), (sub)urban bus systems. Yes, some of them lie outside the scope of openrailmap, but there's the same problem when rendering a transit map, so we should develop a solution that fits them all.

Thus, my suggestion: For each of these "levels", there are four "importances" values: - important node (n+) - secondary node (n-) - important stop (s+) - secondary stop (s-)

So for every station, we would store how important it is within every "level" of traffic it is served by. [2] We'd have to think of nice words for the importance values, but for demonstration I'll use the n/s +/- codes I noted above.

importance:longdistance = s+ importance:regional = n- importance:suburban = n+

Examples: For the "long distance" level, we'd have:

Frankfurt: Hbf (n+), Süd (s-), Airport (s+) Berlin Hbf (n+), Gesundbrunnen (s+), Wannsee (s-) Mannheim (n-), Heidelberg (s+), Darmstadt (s-) München (n+), Nürnberg (n-) Köln: Hbf (n+), Messe/Deutz (s+) Bielefeld (s+), Gütersloh (s-) Freiburg (s+), Offenburg (s-)

For "regional traffic", we'd have: Berlin Hbf (n+), Ostbahnhof (s+), Potsdamer Platz (s-), Südkreuz (s+), Spandau (n-) (I don't know other regions well enough)

Advantage - because only the importance within one level has to be considered, only four (maybe even three) importance values will do, and it is quite easy to define which one fits. - maps can decide how to rank the importance values of the different levels. For example, I'd say an important suburban traffic node is to be ranked higher than a secondary regional traffic stop. For example, Berlin Westkreuz is an important S-Bahn node, while Jungfernheide is a secondary regional traffic stop, thus Jungfernheide can be displayed later than Westkreuz.

Disadvantages: - We'd have to define and store several values for most stations. - And these are mostly redundant: Of course an important long-distance stop is also an important bus stop, etc.

So maybe this level thing can be "compressed" into one thing, maybe not. Let's first discuss if it is a good model the way I suggested it.

Marian

PS: For me it's a lot more work to write this down in English in a way that it hopefully can be understood. Are there even non-germans on this list? (German as the language, not the country :) )

[1] earlier meaning "appears on a lower zoom level" [2] considering OpenRailwayMap, we have the additional problem that one station can be several ones technically. For example, this is the case at Berlin Hbf. Here we would want to first just display "Berlin Hbf", but later (when zooming further in) display labels for "Berlin Hbf (tief)", and the S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations.