Giving stations a magnitude indication

[pietercolpaert]

Gent Sint Pieters is more important than Gentbrugge. Brussels Schuman is less important than Brussels Central, North or Midi. To optimize user experience, we could use an indication of this importance in our CSV file.

Use case: autocompletion

When autocompleting Brussels, Brussels Luxemburg is the first option. This is one of the smaller stations in Brussels and should appear lower.

Which data should we use?

This importance field can be made on the basis of different parameters:

• number of platforms at a station
• number of passengers per day in a station
• Number of trains per day in that station
• Number of times the station is requested over the past year in the iRail API compared to others
• etc.

All of these could are valid indications. We can use these indicators to categorize stations.

Implementation

Add a field importance: a number between 0 (low) and 1 (high).

to start, we can make this a normalized percent based on the access logs or iRail

Problems I see

• Adding a station will become a difficult operation
• This percent will be difficult to compare in a global setting and will only be usable within projects for the NMBS/SNCB using the iRail API

[Bertware]

I'm working on this, based on the amount of stopping trains

[pietercolpaert]

Awesome! Looks like a very good way to do it!

I'd call the column name vehicle_frequency: how much the station is frequented by a vehicle, such as a bus or a train.

What do you think?

[Bertware]

That's okay for me. I created a php script to calculate the frequency, going to look at the sorting tomorrow. Where should I put the frequency calculation? (it's a file that should only be run once on a .csv file to add the extra collumn)

[pietercolpaert]

If it's a PHP command line thing, let's put it in bin/frequency_calculator.php?

[pietercolpaert]

@Bertware any update on this? (I don't want to rush you though, just checking whether you're still on this)

[Bertware]

I'm waiting for the open data descriptor thingy needed for build.js, was going to ask you about it one of these days :)

[pietercolpaert]

Right! If that's keeping you back, then let's use a dummy for now: http://example.org/vehiclefrequency

[Bertware]

Allright, that should get me on track again!

[pietercolpaert]

@Bertware Fixed it quicker than I thought: use http://semweb.mmlab.be/ns/stoptimes#avgStopTimes :)