Talk:Public transport fare

Other fare systems

How would you tag the following:

• Flat fare-per-time (eg. $4 for unlimited travel in a day)?
• Distinct fares for each pair of stops?
• Zone-based fares?
• The incredible mess that is London's public transportation fare system?

--Carnildo (talk) 05:47, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Hey, Carnildo, thanks for chiming in!

• Flat fare-per-time - this page was motivated by Google Maps providing a fare estimate for the journey. While I'm sure this data can easily be added, I don't see a usecase...
• Distinct fares for each pair of stops - I'm sorry, I don't understand what this means. Could you please explain it in detail?
• Zone-based fares - ...nor this. :\
• The incredible mess that is London's public transportation fare system If you could describe it in detail, the discussion would benefit from a wider perspective of different fare systems, and approach a design more likely to be able to cover them.

--Contrapunctus (talk) 17:17, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

• Fare-per-time: The Spokane bus system has a fare system where $2 gets you unlimited boardings for two hours, while $4 gets you unlimited boardings for one day. You need this information to estimate the cost of some of the longer trips. (Incidentally, Google gets this wrong: they give a price for the two-and-a-half hour trip from Eastern Washington University to Liberty Lake Mall of $4, but the transfer from the EWU bus to the Liberty Lake bus takes place well within the two-hour time window for a $2 fare.)
• Distinct fares: If you're going from Huntington to L'Enfant Plaza, the fare might be $3.50, while the longer trip to Federal Center, $3.20. L'Enfant Plaza to Federal Center might be $2.00. These numbers can't be computed from distance, or number of transfers, or travel time, or any other data stored in OSM. They're selected by DC Metro management based on criteria known only to them.
• Zone-based fares: Some public-transportation systems, particularly those with a hub-and-spoke design, divide their service area into a number of zones. The fare for a given trip is based on the number of zones your trip passes through, or on your starting and ending zones.
• London's fare system: Nobody understands it. Want to start a heated debate in a travel forum? Ask what the cheapest way to get from one point to another is. As I understand it, you can easily get a four-fold change in price just by changing payment methods. Yes, it would be useful information to have in a route planner, but first you need to untangle two centuries of competing transport companies and political influences.

--Carnildo (talk) 19:06, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the descriptions! I have some ideas for incorporating fare-per-time and (with some difficulty) distinct fares - I'll add them to the page and would welcome your comments on that. I don't feel equipped to tackle zone-based fares or the London fare system just yet :) but do feel free to describe how zones can be defined on OSM. And it would certainly be nice to include payment systems - e.g. in Delhi, using the Metro card (for the Metro and buses) grants a 10% discount. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Contrapunctus (talk • contribs) 05:06, 12 May 2019

Bring this up in the mailing list

I suggest that you announce this in the transit mailing list talk-transitopenstreetmap.org. You will probably get more replies from there. --Tigerfell  (Let's talk) 13:16, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion! However, I'm afraid I prefer wikis to mailing lists, for a multitude of reasons. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Contrapunctus (talk • contribs) 05:06, 12 May 2019

While you are free to choose, the majority of the community uses mailing lists and you will reach rather few people in the wiki. You can check out other communication channels though. --Tigerfell  (Let's talk) 08:25, 12 May 2019 (UTC)