While visiting my hometown in June 2019, I made a day trip to nearby Głuchołazy, to register the routes and stops of the local buses.

I got to do the edits first in April 2020, though. Meanwhile, some things changed in Głuchołazy: another company overtook the local transit, some new lines appeared and the existing lines’ numbers changed. When editing, I used the most current timetables from the town’s website.

I only worked out those lines, for which I knew where the bus stops are: either from my own data from last trip, or already entered by other contributors, or from aerial photos and my best guesswork (with a fixme when in doubt). Unfortunately, local transit carriers don’t care much about publishing the coordinates of their bus stops; we can be happy if there’s any form of timetable on the web. Who cares bou’ tourists, duh…? All de village’s dudes already know, where da damn bus stops. We, the OpenStreetMap contributors, can add this information and help some travellers from getting lost.

By comparing the official timetables and my GPS traces, I spotted a mistake. During the trip with line number 6, the bus took a slightly different route than the official timetable would suggest. Therefore, this line’s relation in OpenStreetMap resembles the facts from first hand, not the official info.

Tagging convention

When mapping the bus stops, I assumed the simplified approach to PTv2. Briefly:

• The position at which the passenger boards (flag, platform) gets mapped as public_transport=platform, highway=bus_stop with name and details known. On bus stations with multiple numbered platforms, the number goes in local_ref.
• Not mapping public_transport=stop_position at all.
• Avoiding the mapping of stop_area relation; both in ÖPNVKarte as well as in Transport Map, same-named stops in close proximity are automatically grouped.

In my opinion, such a data structure is understandable, flexible and easy to edit, even for unexperienced contributors. Also, it gets correctly interpreted by automated tools like eg. Overpass API line diagrams or ÖPNVKarte.

On rural highways, sometimes the buses do stop in both directions, but the shelter/flag/whatever exists only on one side of the road. In such cases, I’m still mapping two platforms. The ”virtual“ platform should go on the spot with the most recognizable traces (beaten grass) of passengers boarding/unboarding on the roadside.

Lines mapped so far

• Line 1 bus station ↔ Sławniowice (with two variants in each direction) diagram
• Line 3 bus station ↔ Nowy Świętów diagram
• Line 5 bus station ↔ Bodzanów diagram
• Line 6 bus station ↔ Konradów diagram
• Line 7 bus station ↔ Kolonia Jagiellońska diagram

Further work, to do on the next opportunity

• An unnamed ghost-stop: not appearing in any timetables, but there’s a bus stop sign and my bus did stop there
• Line 2 bus station ↔ Polski Świętów
• Line 4 bus station ↔ Pokrzywna ↔ Podlesie