skyNacho
commented
2 years ago I've been thinking about this for a while to figure out whether duration is an inner property of a route or just optional. This is more about what the majority of people consider a route is, not what we might feel should be included. So I looked at the definitions in different languages:
- Cambridge dictionary: "A particular way or direction between places"
- Larousse dictionnaire: "Itinéraire à suivre pour se rendre d'un lieu à un autre"
- Real Academia Española: "Itinerario para el viaje. Carretera"
No definition mentions duration or time. The Spanish definition even considers it a synonym to road. I am now in favor of making it optional.
cportele
Currently "duration" is, like "length", mandatory in the route overview and each route segment. This makes sense for length, since there is always a geometry. However, computing realistic durations may not always be necessary or straightforward. If we keep "duration" as a mandatory attribute, this will likely result in not-very-useful values in cases where a routing engine would normally not compute a duration (like a constant value multiplied by the length). It would be clearer to make the duration optional in the REM.