Bus lines in Taipei disappeared with last map update

[linato]

Hello
Since the last map update, almost all the bus lines in my town (Taipei, Taiwan) disappeared. Before you could simply touch a bus stop and it would bring up all the lines going out from that station, highlight the connected bus stops and show the numbers of the buses.
That future was really neat and the data really good too, with almost all the bus lines in Taipei covered. For Example, the Bus Station at 25°0`52.1N 121°32`4.7E (DMS) is a busy station and must have had 10-20 lines before the last update and now doesn’t show a single line).
Did that happen in your town too? I wonder, if this is a problem in a recent data merge from pocket earth or if the actual source doesn’t provide this data anymore. Does anyone know, what is the source for bus lines? Openstreetmap doesn’t seam to have bus lines.
Greetings linato

[Kritou]

Not sure why you are seeing this in TPE but the Auckland NZ bus data is still up and running

It is an excellent and very practcal facility for both residents and visitors – I do wish it could be extended to our town here in the north west of England

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[Kritou]

Sorry to hear that your TPE data has disappeared but it is still up and running in Auckland NZ

What An excellent and practical facility it is too for both residents and visitors – wish we had it in our town here in thenorthwest of England

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[GeoMagik]

This data is coming from the OSM project and appears to be working elsewhere so its very likely that the OSM data in Taipei got messed up somehow, or possibly changed in a legitimate way but which Pocket Earth doesn’t support yet.

In any case, we have an OSM data update coming in few days, hopefully it will be fixed. If not, we will investigate it further.

[vulgar boatman]

I am having a similar issue with Rome and Bologna, suspect it is a global issue. In Rome, touch a bus stop- no routes at all. But, touch a subway station and the subway line shows up. Then, touch a bus stop, Bus Lines show up, perfect. Bologna has no subway, bus stop do not show bus lines. So go to Rome and touch a subway station, then scroll to Bologna and touch a bus stop- now you get bus lines.

What do you think? I am looking for a setting in the menus.

VB

[GeoMagik]

It looks like at least in a lot of cases the issue is that there are separate POI in OSM from the old style stop area, and new style sitting areas. We are still looking into this, but it seems like if you zoom in all the way (highest 2 zoom levels, the icons change to the sitting area ones and these are selectable).

[linato]

Thanks a lot for the reply.

The new map update effectively brought the bus lines back. Yes, the same update also brought the behavior that now the bus Icon changes to the seat icon at close zoom range. And only if selected in that range, the bus lines will be displayed. so basically:

• 2 upgrades before: everything was fine
• 1 upgrade before: the bus line wouldn’t show in any zoom range; no icon change yet
• the recent upgrade: now displays bus lines again but only if the icon is selected at closer range after it has changed to a seat icon.

Maybe that will help you.

Greetings

[GeoMagik]

Just a quick update: We have resolved this issue, and the fix will be available in the next in-app data update! I will post again here when the update is available for download.

[GeoMagik]

These should be corrected now in the latest version (2.7) after getting the latest in-app data update.

[linato]

Hey Guys.

The Problem is different now, but not fixed.

Now in the new version and after the in-app data upgrade, Bus Stations are only showing at the highest two zoom levels.
In these two zoom levels the problem didn’t occur before. (as mentioned by Geomagik in an earlier post ) It was the lower details level where it didn’t worked. And now on those levels all the bus stations have simply disappeared.

After comparing different Cities, I noticed that the problem only exists for the cities that have a “seat” icon as a bus stand. The seat icon in my town came with one of the recent map updates i believe. Before i could only see a “bus” icon.
I now saw some towns that have bus stands with both icons used. There the bus icon works fine on all levels while the seat icons also only shows on the two highest detail levels.

Reference:
Bus station still not working properly.: As before: 25°052.1N 121°324.7E (DMS)

Town with both kinds of icons used as a bus stand: Biel, Switzerland around 47°819.4N 14°409E (DMS) (two different icons right next to each other, both with bus lines)

Thanks for the Help and replies so far!

[vulgar boatman]

Linato, I am also seeing this and can provide more information. By joining Open Street Map (www.osm.org) you can see and edit the maps, you can add a bus stop (stand) or edit it or delete it. Then when PE updates from OSM your change will be there. Opening PE and OSM side by side and looking at two bus icons near each other, one is a seat icon and the other is a bus icon, in OSM these objects are called Nodes and they have Tags. The bus icon has a tag “highway=bus_stop”. The seat icon has that tag and also another tag “bus=yes”.

So if you add the tag “bus=yes” you will see the bus icon turn into a seat icon at the next PE map update.

Either tag can have a Route or routes associated with it, these are called Relations, and in PE if you select an icon that has routes related to it those routes also light up. Both the bus and the seat icons can have routes but the bus icon rarely has them and the seat icon often does.

I suspect that PE renders those two icons in different ways. If true, then you are asking PE to render bus stops (icon with the tag “bus=yes”) at different zoom levels.

In your original post you say “Does anyone know, what is the source for bus lines? Openstreetmap doesn’t seam to have bus lines.” The bus lines are there in OSM, to make one you start with a node then add another node to make a line or ‘way’ as it is called. Then you tag the way with information and add a relation to a bus stop if you like.

It is very easy to add and edit to the maps and it can be done with an app as you are waiting at the bus stop.

I hope this helps and I hope someone corrects my errors as I am no expert and just starting out.

[linato]

Thanks Vulgar Boatman!
I understand now where the Buslines come from. Guess u can only see those bus line information when logged in on OSM.
So the Bustands in Taipei probably got that additional Tag “bus=yes” by an OSM editor and the icon in PE changed after that.
I was asking about the source in the first place, because i couldn’t identify if it is an OSM or PE Problem. Thats why I posted here in “Allgemeines” instead of “Bugs” at that time.

To summarize; PE still has the Problem with those Bus stands with the seat icon now. In the last version it would show the icon on the layers higher that the two closest, (exactly the same like it did with the bus icon) but not show the attached bus lines for that bus station. And after the latest update it now doesn’t show the Bus stands with the seat icon at all on layers above the two closest.
On the two closest layers though, it works without any problem, as before.

[vulgar boatman]

Linato, I probably should not have said “So if you add the tag “bus=yes” you will see the bus icon turn into a seat icon at the next PE map update” as a known fact, it’s just a theory of mine that it is the bus=yes tag that PE is reacting to. It is some tag rendering issue for sure and the real issue is with OSM. After working on the public transportation structure of OSM for some hours I now realize that buses in particular are really messed up in OSM and therefore also in PE, you are lucky to have it in your area. In Seattle there are only a few obscure bus routes and only about 25% of the bus stops mapped.

[linato]

Well Vulgar, the bus function is a really neat thing! The coverage here in Taipei is extremely good; some people do a really good job putting all this data in and by beeing able to use this data in PE, it makes traveling trough the city really easy. There are many many many buses here. And from my experience close to 100% is covered.
I lived in Switzerland before, Same thing there…

However, for PE to render the bus stands with the seat icon only on the closes two levels makes really no sense. The behavior should be the same as for the bus stands with the bus icon; otherwise its really hard to use that feature.

[nounours]

Hi you friendly souls!

I also think that the bus lines are one of the most important features in OSM/PE. And geomagik and I worked a lot on this to make it better.

The trouble is that OSM data is very unconsistend: there is a old way of tagging busstops (highway=buststop), and a new one (public_transport=stop_position and public_transport=platforme) (see: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Buses and others, also the wiki is rather contradictory!) with “bus=yes”, and then there are all combinations of mixed, doubled and incomplete tagging.
It is not very easy to make PE render all this correctly. When you find something which does not work as aspected, the best procedure will be:

1) check the tagging at this busstop (best using JOSM Editior, but you can also look at the data using http://www.openstreetmap.org with ID Editior).

2) Decide if it’s a obvious tagging error (and fix it!), or if it is a reasonable tagging, which might be widespread, but misunderstood by PE.

3) if the latter is the case: report it here: tagging, node number, etc., so that we can double check it, and then ask geomagik to include it in the data-treatment.

4) Please be aware: not all is possible, because changing something to make it right for one tagging might break something (potentially) more important somewhere else. This is not a problem of PE, but of very inconsistent tagging in OSM. We tried to clean up data in Switzerland (where I’m from), but it’s a lot of work …

thanks for your support!

Nounours77

P.S.: tagging bus lines is somewhat more complicated: it’s a relation consisting of bus_stops and ways of streets, and, and …

[nounours]

One case: stop_positions removed, because platforme also present.

Example station: Bolligen, Switzerland. 46.97007 N 7.49691 E.

The station consists of:

— one train station, as a node placed in the building (old tagging), with name and part of both train routes (ref=”S7″) in both directions

— two stop_positions on the train lines (new tagging) containing the name, part of the respective route of “S7”. ( node 223201765)

— two areas with public_transport=platform, with no name, on each side of the train line (one is member of the line routes, the other not)

Besides, a bus stop with several lines

— one node with public_transport=platform, containing name and being part of the route for each bus line

— an area with public_transport=platform and no name. (way 322463303)

What PE does:

— It shows the train station (building) as a dot: o.k. (but since of the trainlines, and a building, an icon would be better).

— in the stop list of the train lines (S7), it lists only one stop “Bolligen” (very good!). It removes the old tagging, and shows the new one, sitting on the line.

— on the map, the two stop positions are removed. (how does PE do this?) => I think this is wrong: the stop positions should be shown as dots. (if they are selected from the stop list, they are shown as a black icon). From the map, they are not visible nor selectable.

— the two stop areas are shown as a Icons (“Sitting”) on z18 & z19. this is very good! BUT: they do not have a name. => Either: show stop_positions as well (prefered), then we have the name. Or show at least the name on the platform (nice, but not really needed if stop is shown). At least the area which is part of the route should be able to select the train line if selected.

— If the platform is an area, I think this area should be shown. If not, the icon might not make sense. In the example, one bench sits just on the railway line, because the area has banana shape. This is not very intuitive. (I personally would even consider rendering ONLY the area, not an icon for platforms with areas, when the stop is present).

For the bus lines:

— Both platforms are rendered as “Sitting” Icon, but only on level z18/z19 => since bus stops are rendered from z16, this is an error, since no busstop is rendered for this stop. => in this case, there is not public_transport=bus_stop. So, it’s understandable that PE does not to show one. => two ways around it:

a. to show the node containing “highway=bus_stop” IF there is no other public_transport=bus_stop (showing it always as a stop is dangerous, because it’s likely to have two separate nodes, the stop with public_transport=bus_stop and highway=bus_stop (same as public_transport=platform).

b. showing a platform, which is in the line-route as a busstop, if the the role “stop” is not present.

— Again: showing the area platform as an area without an icon would be better.

— On the other hand, if both, stop and platform are present in the route, if the line is selected, both are shown, at all zoom levels. => better would be: show only the stop for z17 and lower, and show both for z18/19. (ex. node 3457891562 – but which is maybe a bad one, since the route-role is not correctly defined as platform? sorry, no better at hand ..)

So far the example. I think the last bit (showing a node with public_transport=platform AND highway=bus_stop) as a Sitting-Icon only (at z18/z19) and NOT as a real busstop (z16 and beyond) is probably the problem that linato is seeing, and I agree this should be corrected in priority!

Also, I still think that for a selected busline, from z14 and lower, not the bus icon should be shown, but only a small circle on the stop position. If not, all the icons cover the line …

cheers, nounours

[nounours]

@linato

did you have time to look into my suggestions? would it (last bold paragraph) solve your problem in Taipei? If yes, then this might be some incentive for geomagik to implement it (making a change where you know that you make at least one customer happy is a good thing 🙂 …)

thanks, nounours

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