Sorry I see that it was from OsmAnd user, but same thing basically.

the species tags for the Roncesvalles surveys are verbatim from plaques in front of the trees

For the record, the species identification is by iNaturalist. I might tweak this, since something like taxon:en=* might work better?

correction to changeset message: "on west side of the street", not east

Hey Cameron,

We could use official_name=* but personally I'm not too sure of the value. Generally my gut feeling is that there isn't much use duplicating data from TTC GTFS that isn't directly used in OSM itself. So name=* yes, route relations maybe (some apps do use them), but official_name=* probably not? The most useful parts are probably name=* and ref=* which contains the TTC stop ID which matches GTFS stop_code.

GTFS guidelines in OSM were recently approved, you can take a look at osm.wiki/GTFS - it's a bit Euro-heavy, but my gist is we can add gtfs:stop_code=5425 to tie stops to GTFS (or just use ref=*, but I guess gtfs:stop_code=* is more explicit) and maybe gtfs:route_id=61394 to routes to tie them to GTFS. That might be useful to someone at some point.

I'm mixed on the "west side" thing for farside stops. Part of me wants to say that OSM is a geographic database so the fact that the stop is on the west side of the intersection can be computed. But then the reductionist argument is that most stops name could also be computed if the name is the cross street. So I'm not opposed, but still think that "what's announced on the bus/streetcar" is a good guide (when you're on the vehicle, you'll hear/see the stop name=* being announced; when you're finding the stop on the street via app, you can usually see its location on a map in addition to seeing the name?). I think in some cases TTC does announce "west side" in the stop names, especially when it's got stops on both sides of a large suburban intersection.

I'm not aware of any apps using tags like official_name=* or description=* for user navigation. I do know OsmAnd does use OSM public transit data if you want to give it a try - as far I can tell it uses only the stop name=* and the route ref=* and name=*, so the description=* won't necessarily help you.

For updates, in my experience transit routes generally don't change that much once mapped in Toronto (streetcar construction detours notwithstanding). I think not all TTC routes are fully mapped with PTv2 relations, and getting that in would be a benefit. Then mapping the 905 transit systems - many of them are there, but incomplete, or not updated in ~8 years and there have been rearrangements. On programming side, creating a QA tool that compares information in GTFS feeds or on agency websites with what's in OSM and flags differences for review would be cool! I don't know how much of stuff like this has been done for OSM already.

Hey Cameron,

Cool to see others people editing Toronto transit in OSM! I was hoping to get your thoughts on the stop names:

The 511 stops were previously named as they are announced on the streetcars (audio and text). So for example "Bastion Street". The reasoning for this was that this is the name most likely to be encountered by people using this data in the real world: an app would tell you to get off at "Bastion Street" and you'd get off when the streetcar announces "Bastion Street".

TTC's official names for these have streets that the route is on (e.g. Fleet Street) but this isn't really used during the trip itself as far as I could tell. Nor is the full name on transit shelters, and there's usually no names on the stop poles.

Another thing is that the TTC uses "West Side", "East Side" suffixes where the stop isn't before the intersection with the street named, but this suffix isn't announced on the streetcar, and the distinction is sometimes confusing (e.g. "Fleet St at Bastion St" and "Fleet St at Bastion St West Side" are actually both on the west side).

I might be missing some benefits of having the long stop names used in OSM - what are they?

Also the official TTC names use abbreviations "St", "Ave", "Blvd" etc which we should expand to "Street", "Avenue", "Boulevard" - everything generally accepted to be an abbreviation is expanded in names in OSM.

Curious to hear your thoughts!

Hi! I was on Cherry Street between the rail bridge and Mill Street today. The bike route on this stretch is not separate from the road - it's paint only, which is pretty canonical cycleway=lane. From a dozen metres away it looked like in the rail underpass it is separated by flex posts, but not really off the road, and I feel that could be fine with cycleway=track. Are you OK with me making those changes to Cherry north of Lake Shore Blvd?

Ugh, sorry about the bounding box, I ran JOSM validator on whole data layer and didn't notice that node/1192125034 was far away, it was downloaded earlier when I was making changes at Broadview station

Looks like I also accidentally squared a bunch of buildings on Galley and Roncesvalles - sorry! I looked at the changed buildings in achavi https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=147231594 and nothing looks _too_ wrong, but sorry for unintended change.

Hi Himké,

Community consensus as it stands now is to not add prefixes in areas that mostly do not have them. Please see osm.wiki/Canada/Tagging_guidelines#Reference_(ref_tag) . As no roads in GTA and Hamilton currently have prefixes, please do not add them without discussing this more widely.

Cheers,
Jarek

Hey, quick question. With this change, bicycle routing is now not possible westbound on Lindsey from Havelock to Gladstone. Is that correct, or is there a counterflow lane for bicycles?

Sorry I accidentally submitted with no comment or source... still getting used to new JOSM interface.

Source is my survey today, as well as Bing and Esri aerial imagery.

Ack, this changeset message should have mentioned Jane Street, not Keele Street - sorry

Hey Andrew, FYI about this change. Thai Home and Amma Roti on Roncesvalles still have their sign up and the sign is lit up at night. But they are closed - the interior is empty and stripped down, including removed flooring. I've marked them as vacant again.

Hello,

I have now restored the crossing you have erroneously deleted with changeset changeset/143339479.

Sincerely,
--Jarek

Hello,

You removed the crossing way/1202215714/history only a month after I mapped it in changeset/140394499 - as that changeset message said, I personally surveyed the intersection as having crossings both sides. Could you please undelete the crossing?

Thanks,
--Jarek

Hi,

Lansdowne Avenue doesn't have a bike lane south of Rideau Avenue - can you re-adjust this please?

Hm, "might be outdated but it's there now" reads confusing. To clarify: the 30 minute loading zone sign is still up here now. It might be unintended by the city, in the sense that it applied earlier but the city doesn't want it to apply anymore; but it hasn't been removed as of yet, so it's there and in practice it's in effect.

Hello,

This edit was incorrect. The Hurontario LRT as it is being built now does not include the downtown detour, only a spur. Please consult at least Wikipedia before making changes in areas you are not familiar with. I made necessary changes in changeset/138401399

Cheers,
Jarek

Honestly, this sounds like a feature request for CityStrides: to add support for certain unnamed roads. For example, specifically to add unnamed laneways (in OSM terms: highway=service + service=alley + name is null - see https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1wcL for current map/list of those in Toronto).

As I understand it, CityStrides started as a challenge to run all of a city's streets. Not alleyways. So a decision on whether alleyways should be added should probably be taken by CityStrides.

Until then, you're messing up one website (OSM and its database) to hack a feature onto another website (CityStrides). It appears CityStrides does request you don't do that - see for example https://community.citystrides.com/t/osm-question-streets-with-names-that-arent-really-streets/23023/2 (albeit for the opposite issue to yours) or https://community.citystrides.com/t/changing-duplicate-street-names-in-osm/18952/3 (for whether names in OSM should be modified to fix behaviour in CityStrides).

I'll give an example. A while back, Pokemon GO populated their map of the world from OSM, and set Pokemon spawn points to be in parks. Makes sense because people can go to parks and hang out there. Then people who wanted a spawn point near their house would go on OSM and add a park on their front lawn. Technically a lawn might be greenspace, but on a larger scale, it's pretty obviously misusing the database for your own purposes. Pokemon GO wasn't the only user of the OSM data, and everyone else was getting worse experience.