The Norwegian public transport stops are structured as a two-, or three-level element. The most fundamental element is the Quay, which represents the actual position where a public transport vehicle stops to board- or alight passengers. The next two levels form the connections between the Quays and carry information such as name, modality and tariff zones.

A fundamental principle

The structure of a stop should always reflect the actual conditions and physical reality of the stop. Any fictitious data is disallowed in order to keep the data clean, sustainable and predictable. This means the stops must be placed where they actually are rather than making adjustments to suit external needs.

Placing elements on the map

Quay

The Quay should be placed to correspond as precisely as possible with the estimated boarding position of a vehicle, usually on the front door of the vehicle or the exit point of a sea vessel. For a bus, this point is primarily the edge of the pavement or platform at the tactile paving mark. When no tactile paving exists the position is estimated. When the stop has no pavement the general position is estimated based on how the bus may fit into the existing space, placement of signs or shelters, or the otherwise most logical location to stop a bus along the road.

• A precise placement reduces the need for future revisions of data and makes pedestrian routing more predictable.

For boats and aircraft, the end of the gangway or ramp to the vehicle in question is used.

For modalities which do not have a specific point of boarding, a centred- or weighted point, is preferable as seen in reference to the access points of the stop.

StopPlace

The placement of the StopPlace element has no regulation but it is sensible to locate these on the centerline of the road to which its subordinate Quays belong. StopPlace can, for example, be used for icon placement in maps and placement in connection with the road centerline is therefore advantageous. In cases of a public transport terminal or other wider area which may be considered the same stop place a centred position is preferable, as experienced by the traveller.

Multimodal StopPlace

The position of this element should generally follow the same standards as the StopPlace. It can also be a good idea to not place these elements directly on top of a StopPlace since they may then block each other from being clicked on the map.

Parking positions

A centred position for these elements is preferable. For very large areas, such as an airport parking, a positing near the access point to the airport - or splitting the parking into several objects may be useful.

Naming a stop

It is always a good idea to give each stop a unique name which works in all contexts. That is, the name should work equally well in a local, as a national context. This means names like “The Hospital” is considered bad since it only works in a local context. However, not all names can be given a nationally unique name. In these cases - usually for the smaller stops - a simple rule of “unique within the local administrative unit” is used, allowing the differentiation of stops to be made by showing the customer the stops municipality and county as part of the journey planning service.

For the same reason, including the name of municipality and county in the name of the stop is not allowed.

When combining stops into Multimodal StopPlaces it is preferable to make the parent stop name equal, or more general than the names of the child-stops.

When a stop with a name which is too general exists together with other stops referencing the same name, for example, “Vikersund” and “Vikersund fire station”, it is preferable to change the first stop name into a more specific and descriptive name, or sometimes to make both names equal and combine them into a multimodal stop (assuming they have physical proximity).

Description field on StopPlace

The use of the description field differs between StopPlace and Quay. For StopPlace it should be seen as an extension of the name field. So if the stop name is “Main Street” the description field can be “by the harbour”. For this reason, it is advised to begin this field in lowercase letters.

Alternative names

It is possible to add alternative names to stops which can assist the customer to find the stop they are looking for. Since the alternative name is usually not displayed to the customer it is important that the names are closely linked.

Examples

It is advisable to use alternative names as sparsely as possible, and only when it adds value for the end user.

Label

• For airports the location portion of the airport name is added as the type: Label.

Translation

For stops where a translation of the stop name is commonly used or important due to extensive tourism, it is possible to add name values for a number of other languages. This can also be used for stops outside of Norway.

All alternative names added, regardless of type or translation will be searchable in the Entur geocoder which will return the name of the stop place.