Re: [OSGeo BC] Updated Invitation: Vancouver Island OpenStreetMap.org - Mapping Party @ Tue Aug 11 18:00 – 21:00 (osgeo-bc@lists.osgeo.org)

[Michael Weisman]

Good ol' Translink.

I wrote a script a few years back that not only scrapes translink's
schedules, but also attempts to parse the stop names, geocode them,
and then create lines from the points and load the whole thing into
PostGIS. It worked pretty well, (maybe 80% accuracy) and did not use
translink's spatial data but resulted in a nasty gram from them, so I
haven't touched it in a couple years.

The source is on my website if you are interested in playing with it:
http://www.mweisman.com/geocode.zip. I have also documented the REST
API that translink's iPhone app uses
(http://www.mweisman.com/transit.html), but since this is not supposed
to be public, I have no idea what the terms of service are for the
data.

You may want to start by simply using the web-based editing tools to
add stops to OSM. May be easier than actually going around to every
stop on foot.

--
Michael Weisman

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
<ducky at webfoot.com> wrote:
> There is a young man named Carson who put together a quite lovely site
> scraping info from Translink's site and repackaging it in a much more usable
> form:
>    http://www.transitdb.ca/
> (Translink is the transit system for the lower mainland.)
>
> Carson has been keeping a very low profile because some third party asserts
> ownership of the geolocation of all the bus stops.  Seems to me that we
> should organize a mapping party to just go get the bus stop locations and
> numbers and put them into the public domain so that people like Carson can
> do their work unfettered.
>
> Question 1: Does anybody here have experience with mapping parties?
>
> Question 2: Does anybody here have good connections to the Open Street Map
> project?  I presume that's where the data should go...
>
>
> --
> Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
>
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