Leverage OSM feature data to import existing transit lines into a map

[adityarathod]

Use existing OSM data (railway/highway=bus_stop tags) to enable contributors to import existing transit infrastructure onto a map. Ideal use cases would be to propose changes to existing service or sketch out how new routes sit within the existing transit context.

One example usecase with significant civic interest is SEA (Ballard Link Extension)

[WillieCubed]

Thanks for the suggestion! Some of the underlying user experience already partially exists, though it's split across two import flows: pulling road and rail data from OpenStreetMap and separate GTFS import that's currently only implemented only for the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada. We're currently in the process of refactoring the import engine to better generalize to other systems, cleaning up a lot of bugs in the UX and, frankly, doing a human-eyes pass on the UI and associated copy.

The original motivation for this app was creating a higher-fidelity solution to sketching transit lines rather than drawing on Google Maps screenshots on my iPad. However, over the past few weeks, it's become clear that there is utility in a publicly accessible tool that can help visualize a proposal next to the network a city already runs.

Likely User Experience

I believe the desired UX here would be:

• On first launch/no session detected, the app onboarding dialog appears
• As a final step, the user is given options to:
  • Start from scratch (Sandbox Mode)
  • Import from real city data
• If the user opts to import, we provide a means of searching for their city using an autocomplete-enabled import box that is curated
  • Alternatively, if no curated entry covers where they are, they import whatever the map is currently framed on

As a note, I'm still trying to figure out how Sandbox Mode will work for this app. The original motivation was starting from blank canvas, but we need to balance the intended ease of use of "just draw imaginary lines on a map" with the utility of actually linking the semantic network of a transit system to the underlying infrastructure (e.g. drawing a bus line automatically snaps to real streets).