Is there a way to make a bus route an area? The bus companies in my area offer certain flex routes within specific areas and I wanted to map those. Is that possible?
I fear: no.
How should this work with the use of OSM elements?
Can you post us a graphic how to display that?
I’ve also been thinking of how to OSMize these flex routes.
A map example in Jyväskylä, Finland: Kyytiveikko auto 1
The minibus services (in this order) stops # 3 - 4 - 2 - 1 - 5 - 6 - 7 and vv. There are fixed stopping times for stops # 1, 3 and 7 only. The other stops are request only. En route from stops # 3 towards 1 the minibus flexes within the red area and en route stops # 1 towards 7 within the blue area. The service runs about 3 times a day (Mo - Fr)
Then there is the Poimuri flex bus service in Palokka, Jyväskylä. The minibus flexes withing the marked areas one hour in the morning. After passenger collection the bus heads for the city centre through ia. the hypermarkets of Palokka. And reverse in the afternoon. This service differs from Kyytiveikko by that that the areas are served once a week only - on Mondays withing the Tikkakoski area, on Thursdays at the Kuohu - Ruoke axle… Thus the different colours of the flex areas.
Maybe a relation tagged with type=route + route=flex_bus would do the thing? The flex area boundary would become the outer member of the relation and possible fixed stops would be membered platforms…
That’s a possibility of that. Another possibility I had in mind was type=route + route=bus + area=yes (which would be semi-compatible with current public transit layers in that they would show up).