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mysociety / fixmytransport

A site focussed on connecting and empowering people who share transport problems of different kinds.
http://www.mysociety.org/2010/03/15/mysocietys-next-12-months-fixmytransport-and-project-fosbury/
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Develop a tool for capturing information about Rail User Groups #692

Open paulh8 opened 12 years ago

paulh8 commented 12 years ago

It would be useful for FixMyTransport to have access to a database of Rail User Groups with a list of railway stations covered by each group so advice about which group to contact can be given either automatically through the website ('list of relevant organisations') or simply in suggestions by volunteers.

Railfuture maintain a list of Rail User Groups; it is a PDF document which can be downloaded here and contains details of around 300 groups: http://www.railfuture.org.uk/Key+rail+user+groups There is an alphabetical list and a regionally sorted list.

However the list is simply a list of group names and website links, with a number of groups being marked as no longer active so it is a long way from something which can answer the question ‘is there a rail user group for my service or station’.

I have a suggestion that FixMyTransport develops a website tool to capture this data, which could be used by both Railfuture and FixMyTransport, and would be a useful way of promoting FixMyTransport to Railfuture and Rail User Groups. The tool would also make sure that the data was captured directly into a format which could be used directly by the FixMyTransport website to generate contact suggestions.

MyfanwyNixon commented 11 years ago

I mentioned this to Tom yesterday, and he said that a first step would be to create an instance in PopIt (our software for storing and creating connections between details of names and contacts).

At the moment, PopIt does not deal with location data, but once it can, it would be able to provide the kind of function you've mentioned, because the location data from the route or stop could 'talk to' the PopIt instance and deliver the correct contact details (this is me trying to translate into non-geek speak so that I can understand it; I may have misrepresented some details...)

Anyway, I've made the relatively easy start of importing the websites and, where they exist, contact email addresses: http://uktransportgroups.popit.mysociety.org/person. At some point in the future, I/others can add things like Facebook groups and Twitter accounts.

This is an abnormal use of PopIt I think, as it was really set up with the inten tion of storing individuals rather than groups, but hey, it was Tom's idea.

paulh8 commented 11 years ago

MyF,

Thanks to you and Tom for investgating this and demonstrating the tool with the import of Railfuture Rail User Group data. If at some point the ability to link this tool to FixMyTransport's railway station list or route list was implemented then it looks as if this would work well.

Paul

MyfanwyNixon commented 11 years ago

I might also add that there's a bit more data on PopIt (and it's more up to date) than on the original PDF, as where there was no contact email address given, I tried my best to find them, via the website or Facebook etc. I also missed out any group which appeared to have either died out, or to have no online presence at all.