Parent of stop_point

[pietercolpaert]

Problem

At this moment we make the distinction between a public transport stop and a private transport stop. This is a problem because they need to be interoperable: a stop_area can contain a parking spot, a bicycle garage, and so forth.

Possible solution

Make a parent class called stop_point and stop_area which do not belong to a public or private transport ontology (but to the general open transport ontology). A parking spot can then inherit from stop_point, as can a railway platform or a bicycle garage.

[j33f]

Maybe we can call it a hub.

Lets take an example : http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=43.60487714409828&lon=3.879992365837097&zoom=18 In here we have a typical hub :

• train station
• tramways stops
• city buses stops
• inter-city buses stops
• regional buses station (called in french «gare routière»)
• shared bikes
• taxi station

all these things are connected and a junction can be made on all those kind of transportation «stops»

A hub could include exchange car parks (car to tramway or subway) classical car parks…

[pietercolpaert]

I think it would be best to define it as a "stop_area" and that a "stop_area" contains a lot of "stop_point"s. A "stop_point" does not necessarily have a "stop_area".

The semantics of "stop" is in my opinion perfect for a general vocabulary for both private and public transport.

I think the real question to be answered here is: "Do we need the distinction between public and private transport?"

[Tristramg]

stop area is the term from transmodel http://sitp.transmodel.org/transmodel_v5_en/pages/7dd1b9c33a7e01e0.htm. I think it is not ambigous and easy to understand.

I found nothing in transmodel about private transport, maybe I just missed it : http://sitp.transmodel.org/transmodel_v5_en/pages/57ca47aa3d3500e4.htm

I have a very strong opinion against stop as in transmodel it refers to a bus stopping at a stop point. So it is extreamly ambigous.

And now to the rel real question ;) We can either:

• have a generic type for private and public transport
• having different types inheriting from point or something similar
• be much less coupled and we will define later a the right representation for a bike shed or a parking lot and the relations with a public transit stop point

[pietercolpaert]

+1 for @Tristramg 's comments. I prefer using stop_area as well.

Answer to "the real question"

I would prefer to have a stop_point to refer to anything, whether it is a parking lot, a drop off zone for rented bikes or a bus stop point. Then we should have a property for the types of transport the stop_point supports.

For instance:

<this stop_point> <has_mode> <bus>,<tram>

for a stop_point which serves buses and trams.

Now for another question: does a stop_point belong to 1 agency only? And a stop_area can contain a lot of stop_points from different agencies?

[Tristramg]

So let’s stick with stop_point and stop_area, and private transport can also use stop_point.

It would be a pitty if gare du nord could only accept trains from SNCF and no one from Eurostar or Thalys ;) A stop point is not bound to any agency.

How would you handle private transportation? gare du nord has_mode taxi? And we define different modes for bike rental, taxi, parking space or should we define an other relation? Might impact decisions on issue #3

[pietercolpaert]

@Tristramg

A stop_point as I have understood now can be: a platform for trains, a platform for buses, a bicycle garage, a specific stop_point for a boat and so on.

So in your second paragraph, the idea would be:

<gare du nord platform 3> <has_mode> <eurostar train>, <thalys train>, <sncf train> .

Companies like Eurostar, Thalys, TER, etc can then just define their own vehicle type by extending the vehicle class/word.

In your third paragraph, things would become:

<gare du nord> a <stop_area> .
<gare du nord> <has_stop_point> <taxi_stop 1> .
<taxi_stop 1> a <stop_point>.
<taxi_stop 1> <has_mode> <taxi>.
<taxi_stop 1> <maintained_by> <taxi_company 1>.

In more words: gare du nord is a stop_area. It has a stop_point called for instance taxi_stop 1. This taxi_stop 1 has a mode called taxi.