Tag:highway=bus_stop

+/- highway=bus_stop Description A bus stop is a place where public buses stop. Used on these elements Useful combination Key:name Key:operator Used combinations in World Australia/Oceania Europe (list) Asia (list) Central America (list) South America (list) Africa (list) Status Undefined

Contents 1 Definition 2 Tagging advice 2.1 Common Usage (node positioning) 2.2 More exact Usage (used in several central european cities) 2.2.1 Stopping Point 2.2.2 Platform 2.2.3 Stop Area 2.2.4 Further information 2.3 considerations 3 Bus Routes 4 Photos 5 NaPTAN import in the UK 6 See also 7 External links

Definition

This tag is for a bus stop, which may be identified by a pole, a shelter, a bus bay and/or a yellow zigzag line on the street. In some countries customary bus stops without any physical infrastructure at all are common.

Attention! This is very controversial! There is a new much more thought-outproposed scheme that is a part of Proposed features/Public Transport with alternative set of tags (that can coexist with the old scheme), that has not become a standard yet.

Tagging advice

Common Usage (node positioning)

The widely used approach is to place bus stop nodes off to one side of the highway way, so not with node being part of the way. This easily captures the important information about which side of the road the bus stop is on, however this has been the subject of some debate, because it has the disadvantage of not explicitly associating the bus stop with the way (a headache for routing software) See discussion and the more exact usage described below

A bus stop should be defined for each discrete location where buses stop. If there are two places where buses stop on either side of the road then two bus stops should be defined.

A bus stop is a type of Stop Point as defined in Transmodel.

More exact Usage (used in several central european cities)

The common usage described above is an easy and simple way to tag a bus stop. But there exist several ideas and proposals to extend the usage to a more exact level. Several public-transport-city/network-wiki pages (especialy in central europe) recommend the usage of such an extended schema in their area.

All of the schemas have the following basic understanding:

	Stopping Point is the point on the street where the bus stops.
	Platform is the place where the passengers are waiting for the bus.
	Stop Place / Stop Area is the sum of the stopping point and the platform and is tagged as a relation.

The recommended schemas differ between the cities/networks they are using this model. Most used is the following:

Stopping Point

The Stopping Point is the place where the bus stops on the street.

This definition is in accordance to Transmodel, a reference model for public transportation. The stopping point is part of the street, so it will get mapped as a node of the way. Most widely used is the following convention:

Tag	Usage	Description
highway=bus_stop	always	Defines the stopping point of the bus on the street. In contrast to the old schema this node is part of the way and not anymore beside the way.
name=*	recommended	Name of the bus stop, especially when there exists no public_transport=stop_area-
ref_name=*	optional	Name which is used in Internet timetables, usually a combination of bus stop name and city name; e.g. ref_name=Steintor, Hannover
public_transport=stop_position	optional	This tag ensures compatibility with the new public transport schema
bus=yes	optional	This tag ensures compatibility with the new public transport schema
network=*	optional	Name of the network if exists.
operator=*	optional	Name of the operator.
ref=*	optional	Reference of the bus stop.
railway=tram_stop	optional	Tagged if it is also a tram stop.
tram=yes	optional	This tag ensures compatibility with the new public transport schema.

Platform

The platform is the place where the passengers are waiting for the buses.

It can be drawn as a node, way or area, depending on information available to the mapper. Here is how to tag it:

Tag	Usage	Description
highway=platform	always	A place aside streets where passengers can wait for PSV. Mainly for compatibility to the unified stop area proposal and older software not yet handling public_transport=* tags.
name=*	recommended	Name of the bus stop, especially when there exists no public_transport=stop_area-
public_transport=platform	optional	This tag ensures compatibility with the upcoming new public transport schema
bus=yes	optional	If passengers can board or alight buses at this platform.
network=*	optional	Name of the network if exists.
operator=*	optional	Name of the operator.
ref=*	optional	Reference of the bus stop.
tram=yes	optional	If passengers can board or alight trams at this platform.

Stop Area

The Stop Area is tagged as a relation and contains all nodes and ways that are related to the bus stop in reality. In addition to the highway=bus_stop and highway=platform those are mainly amenity=shelter and amenity=bench, if they are drawn separately (alternatively they may be captured by appending the proper tags, shelter=yes or bench=yes to the highway=platform-primitive.

Tag	Usage	Description
type=public_transport	always	Defines the relation as type=public_transport
public_transport=stop_area	always	Defines public_transport=* as stop area (in this case as bus stop)
name=*	recommended	Name of the bus stop.
network=*	optional	Name of the network if exists.
operator=*	optional	Name of the operator.
ref=*	optional	Reference of the bus stop.

Further information

If there are three bus stops in a row on one side of the road then there should be three stops identified on the way.

More background information about the used schemas can be found under unified stoparea and new public transport schema.

considerations

Remember buses also stop OFF streets in designated bus stations and bus areas where there will be designated stops/bays often on specific platforms. These can still be tagged as highway=bus_stop

There are many ideas for additional tags to describe a bus stop. The main four tags to use are:

highway=bus_stop

name=* Basically whatever is shown, but this MUST be a name e.g City Centre KD, Acocks Green Village SA, NOT a location which is tagged separately. If this information is present recording and tagging it will be greatly appreciated by all kinds of future public transport applications using OSM data. If mappers can adopt this format, the applications will be more robust.

shelter=*

source=* Usually survey (note: can be saved in changeset comments since API0.6)

Additionally you can add anything that you know or can see on the actual bus stop. Please be aware not every bus stop carries the same information or indeed the complete set listed below, they vary widely not just between countries, but also between cities and regions. The more detail you can add the better.

A useful standard way of tagging some of this information (it’s not an exhaustive list, please feel free to add more) is as follows:

ref=*, uic_ref=* or asset_ref=* Basically whatever is shown. Many older stops don't have asset numbers yet. The number may be in the form of a plaque on the bus stop post or shelter. While this asset number may not be relevant for transport purposes, it does help quickly identify the stop in the database.

operator=* Whatever is explicitly shown or you know. Some stops are used by specific operators, others are used by many.

network=* The network this bus stop belongs to.

url=* if there is an online resource listing a bus timetable.

Bus Routes

Currently these are best represented as relations. Follow the conventions at Relation:route wiki page.

The tags route_ref, location and towards in conjunction with highway=bus_stop should not be used anymore, instead this information should be added to the corresponding relations.

Photos

• 
• 
• 
• 

NaPTAN import in the UK

Main article: NaPTAN/Import

Note for mappers in the UK. There's some progress with importing some 360,000 bus stops, ferry terminals etc from the NaPTAN(National Public Transport Access Node) database. Data from this import will be tagged as naptan:datafieldname= contents e.g naptan:ATCOCode= 347891132. There will be trial on a region first to work out how to integrate locally generated data with this national dataset and there is also work being carried out on a visual tool for comparison/merge with existing data or straight verification where no local data exists. This should take a couple of months, and progress will be reported here. If you see naptan tags appearing they will be essential for future public transport applications and they represent an immensely rich dataset. It’s pretty crucial that you don’t mess with them or delete them. We’ll be able to do some pretty cool stuff once this data is in OSM and it will save mappers an awful lot of editing slog, so please treat it with respect. There’s lots more data in the NaPTAN dataset than bus stops – it covers every form of public transport and there will no doubt be future projects concerning import of other data

See also

• amenity=bus_station
• Buses
• Proposed features/Public_Transport
• Proposed features/unified stoparea

External links

Transmodel terms starting with (S)

Related terms: bus stop.