Template talk:Cambridgeshire Guided Busway RDT

I think this template should be showing only the busway and not the bus routes that the County hopes may run and use the busway. Therefore I think the template should be returned to it's previous form with separate northern and southern sections. Rich257 (talk) 16:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Does not show running from railway station to hospital

One of the most publicised parts of the route is the connexion from the railway station to the hospital, however the diagram appears to show that buses from the railway station will not call at Addenbrokes. Shome mishtake shurely?

SimonTrew (talk) 21:47, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I created the route diagram from the route map provided by the County, that is linked from in the article somewhere I think. There's no detail on the County's diagram about the junction there, so I put something in to be getting on with. Presumably we'll be able to see the situation on the ground soon. As to what the services are — we'll have to wait for some timetables to be published. Rich257 (talk) 22:21, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Northern and southern sections

Again, it's wrong to show the northern and southern sections as one scheme since they are isolated and are not connected. This should be split to two templates again. Rich257 (talk) 09:05, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Recent changes

There is too much detail in the recent changes to the route diagram. The diagram should be simple and clear, it's a diagram not the detail of the route. There's no need for:

1. The railways
2. The apparent connection between the railway and the busway, they don't join
3. The cutting
4. The embolding of the names
5. The mention of new town for Northstowe, you can see this if you go to that article
6. The park and ride bus symbol since this isn't an interchange with the bus, see the legend.

Rich257 (talk) 09:17, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

1. The railway interchanges at Huntingdon railway station and Cambridge railway station were part of the selling point of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway project and contribute significantly to the projected passenger numbers provided by the promoters—as well as being vital destinations on the system, their inclusion highlights the existence of the previous Cambridge and Huntingdon railway corridor; without which the project could not have been instigated. The labels—to North and to London—at the end of the railway snippets help to provide global orientation to Wikipedia readers, just not those familiar with local Cambridgeshire geography.
2. The railway corridor abutts Milton Road. The Science Park branch of the northern guided section starts at the same point on Milton Road, and the northern on-road section finishes at the same point. Should the proposed Chesterton railway station be constructed, the Science Park busway branch would likely be diverted straight across Milton Road and along the remaining rail-spur to serve the new station.
3. Trumpington Cutting is important as it is a capacity bottle-neck; it is the only section requiring single-line working—owing to the requirement for a continuous maintenance track.
4. The bold names highlight the most significant points served. The centres of  Cambridge,  Huntingdon and  St Ives would appear equivalent to the villages of  Swavesey and  Oakington without the extra differentiation. These highlighted destinations could form a starting point for adding drop down hide/show options to ensure an even more compact diagram (see {{East Coast route}} and {{Caledonian Sleeper}}).
5. Northstowe New Town is somewhat different from other destinations served by the project: it doesn't exist, and yet its future existance is intertwinned as mutual justification with that for the new busway network. Wikipedia and its articles should be accessible to all and should stand alone (eg. when printed out on paper). Instead of "new town" the phrase "under construction" after the Northstowe stop name could work,

   

   P+R sign

   but as of the financial crisis of 2007–2010 is perhaps untrue.
6. The symbol generally used in the United Kingdom for a park and ride site is that of a bus—this adds to the general accessibility of the article, and its diagram, to a wider readership.

Are there any other points that could be further improved? —Sladen (talk) 15:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

1. There is little point in adding the railway lines since this complicates the diagram, it is important to note the interchange with the railway stations. Rich257 (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
2. The diagram suggests that the railway joins the guideway, this is complete nonsense! Also you are future gazing for infrastructure that's not yet planned. Rich257 (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
3.  
4. Who says these are the most important destinations? They are your arbitrary choice. Please provide a reference that these are the most important destinations. The large and small station dots show the same information. Rich257 (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
5. Based on this logic you should add "village" after Oakington and "town" after Huntingdon or perhaps "Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, formerly in Huntingdonshire". There are links because you cannot put all of the information on the page. Pretty soon the route will be in use but the Northstowe portion won't be, so this will be clear and the "new-town" suffix isn't needed. Rich257 (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
6. The legend says the symbol means "Station with interchange to bus, minibus or coach bus", which isn't true. It seems other parkway stations don't have this addition. Rich257 (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes [points that could be improved]:

• The aim of a route diagram is to simplify the actual situation on the ground, if you want the detail go and look at an Ordnance Survey map. Therefore a simpler route diagram is a better one.
• The road crossings road are shown using the symbol for a motorway (incorrect), and in most cases aren't signficant, so would be best removed.
• The dotted line for the section boundary is arbitrary and has no physical meaning so is best removed.

Rich257 (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I've taken out the dotted border icon, it may turn out worthwhile to add Cambridge Bus station in approximately the same spot. The current position of the diagram is next to the #Route heading and its sub-headings, allowing the route diagram to be followed, coupling up with the mentions of the bridges, viaduct, and Trumpington Cutting in the text. Two of the bridges (out of seven bridges) are perhaps "non-notable", but for the sake of two, it's (IMHO) worthwhile having the diagram be complete with respect to the main civil-engineering aspects. The actual choice of over-bridge bridge icons in 'uex' (light blue) format is pretty limited—the choice of BSicons should be wider when sections of the route are open and the whole set of 'u' (dark blue) icons will be available. I'd encourage hunting though and seeing what you can find, but I was trying to avoid uploading extra icons especially.

Remember not to take the theoretical labelling of the icons too literally, they're just visual icons. The guided busway is a first in terms of its length and cross-country deployment. It's not a railway and it's not a road, so it'll take some time to work out what it is... the Route Template Diagram system has been adapted from railways to cover roads, canals, trams, ferries and now this busway. Everything is mix-and-match and ultimately the article text should make everything clear. Numbered notes:

1. I've reduced the "overlap" of the mainline railway between Cambridge railway station and Chesterton. The Hills Road and Long Road are basically single-spanning bridges and then there's the Addenbrooke's bridge (also involving the railway); after some experimenting it worked better (IMHO) taking the CONT arrow one square beyond the end.
2. I've removed the railway spur leading to Milton Road level crossing. The mention of Chesterton railway station is not so much ball-gazing as purely illustrative—a reminder than the railway corridor does indeed meet the guideway at that Milton Road junction.
3.  
4. The embolded locations are those that have been (IIRC) primarily mentioned during the promotion and public enquire. Are there any that you believe have been incorrectly denoted?
5. It's not so much about marking City vs. Town vs. Village as denoting long-established-organically-developed-settlement vs. non-existant-but-to-be-artificially-created-settlement. In the United Kingdom, the planning term for the latter is "new town".
6. Bridge icons: if you can find a pair of 'uex' icons, one big dual carriage, one smaller they could be swapped. The yellow bridge is pretty good as in the UK, yellow-brown is used for B-roads. The A14 itself is pretty important to differentiate, as it is the claimed raison d'être for the bus link.
7. What we have for RDT is a set of reusable aligned icons in standardised colours. Zero of them were used specifically designed for a Cambridgeshire Guided Busway concrete guideway, so we get to use what is available and what makes sense. It turns out that the guideway has some characteristics shared with railways, some with roads, and even waterways—which is reflected by the use of many icons to form the diagram.

—Sladen (talk) 04:36, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

There's still too much clutter on this diagram, the simpler the better. Remove all the railway lines, they do not add to the diagram. The simple text about where they lead to is too simplistic and misleading, you can follow the link to the station if you want to know.

The apparent importance of the link between the two hospitals was mentioned a lot, should Addenbrooke's be emboldened? You said there was mention of connections to rail at Huntingdon, so embold that one. The park and ride stops (Trumpington, Longstanton, St Ives) are intended to take traffic off the A14 so best to embolden those too.

You still haven't explained why a settlement's age/status is important on a route diagram.

Again, it's a diagram not a map, so the bridges, with the exception of the A14 (perhaps) and Hills Road (mentioned in the article and a barrier to double deck buses), aren't adding anything except clutter. Follow the link in the article to see the route on a map.

It's not "theoretical labelling" of icons, it is precision. An icon has a meaning, the meaning is there so there is an common, clear understanding. If you use arbitrary icons because you think they look pretty then you will confuse people. To me it looks like there are off-guideway bus services connecting at that point of the guideway. Rich257 (talk) 11:01, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Northstowe New Town is important because (1) it does not exist, (2) its viability is [apparently] mutually dependent upon the busway. —Sladen (talk) 11:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

That has no effect on the route diagram, only on the scheme's finances, therefore it doesn't belong on the route diagram. Rich257 (talk) 08:57, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I really must disagree with you. "The simpler the better" is wrong. "The simpler way of giving the main points about the route to the general reader" is correct. Here, as I see it, the current route map serves to give me - as a non-local reader - sufficient information (and background for some matters, such as the "new town" reason for one route being only 'possible' and the limits of the single-track working) which not being overloaded. Given the terminals at railway interchanges, and the P&R demands of the service, these also are correctly included. Indeed, having seen this and now read the article I'm most interested to see how the whole thing works out! --AlisonW (talk) 11:51, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, one thing though. I agree that the P&R symbol being used here is somewhat of a nonsense as the 'bus' of the icon is the service of the marked route. Maybe exchange it for a blue [P]arking symbol? --AlisonW (talk) 12:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Changes around Orchard Park section and minor textual changes.

Thanks for all this hard work on the map, it looks very nice. I just summarise some changes I have made, which I hope are not controversial considering what is said above:

I walked the part of the route from Orchard Park to the Science Park on Tuesday. (I live near Orchard Park and work on the Science Park).

1. The station (?) signs at Orchard Park are for Orchard Park East, unless my memory fails. I think there is a stop further up (Orchard Park West, I presume). I will try to find some documentation for this, at worst I can walk over there and have a look (unfortunately no camera) but I guess this might be OR, at least until buses actually start running to serve those stops. Similarly since the junction is actually street running, as far as I can tell, there is nothing to stop Orchard Park buses going down to the Science Park etc (i.e. a triangular junction), but here we have a problem in representation until the actual bus routing is known. The pic in the infobox shows that junction (at Orchard Park East), by the way, so you can see it is not actually "guided" at that point.
2. I moved Orchard Park up above Cambridge Regional College and the Science Park. While of course this is a diagrammatic map, the station is very close to the junction, CRC somewhat further down, and I think this better represents the fact that basically the bus will get off the main track, stop, then continue with street running (at least beyond Orchard Park West) and so gives a longer run of street running. I do appreciate that the route is diagrammatic not geographic, but this change makes the actual geography a bit better represented with no change to the topography (topology?).

1. I've removed "Bridge" on the road names at the southern end, since they are obviously bridges. This may be contentious, I suppose, considering the palaver over them. I was considering adding their A-road designations, not sure about that yet. I might add them because at worst it is easier to remove them than to add them if consensus is not to have them.
2. I've changed the label "to the north" for the railway beyond Huntingdon to "East Coast Main Line", since the line goes to London of course too but that is not stated on the map (for want of space I assume, and another line added to the map just to write that is probably not justified), I think it is adequate. I appreciate then for those reading on paper they don't know the line goes "to the north" but since that is also rather vague I think putting and linking the name of the rail line is better.
3. With Cambridge rail I'd like a better treatment with the lines, but I do realise this is not a rail diagram. I might make another diagram simply for the complex around Cambridge, as although I've tried to represent it reasonably well at Template:Ipswich to Ely RDT it is still a little unsatisfactory I think; that diagram is for a larger network so has to dispense with some minor layout fiddling for the benefit of the larger layout issues, but if we dealt just with the area from Cambridge to the junctions north and south of it (and possibly the stations immediately beyond) and put that at Cambridge railway station. I think it would make it a lot clearer what transport links converge at Cambridge. I must admit my surprise that stations that hubs don't have this kind of hub map (or if they do, a pointer to an example would be great for me as a starting point on doing that for Cambridge).
4. I don't want to enumerate destinations but I wonder if "to London" at the bottom could be "to London and Stansted Airport" (perhaps with airport symbol)? I know it is a bit odd to call out one station, but considering the supposed importance of the busway as a multimodal interconnector I wonder if it is prominent enough to be worth mentioning.
5. I'd like to put the Northstowe section in light blue as a proposed link, but I will first hunt around to see what icons are available for that.

Thanks again for all your hard work here, I think it looks really great.

Si Trew (talk) 12:13, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I found info about Orchard Park stops here: [1] so will add it. I am not sure if I should add it as a reference to the article itself. Si Trew (talk) 12:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Park and Ride

Park and ride, bus facing left

Park and ride, bus facing right

I've uploaded a couple of Park and Ride symbols as suggested and changed the RDT to use them. However, as I suspected, at the small resolution they are (at least to my eye) pretty much unintelligible. I had to cut-and-shunt the bus(it is one window shorter) and I did use the Traffic font but since this is not on the WP renderer it came out awful, so switched to Arial. But the font is pretty minor, I can change that if it's desired to keep this icon, my own feeling is that it's unlikely to be legible and that a simple "P" sign may be better. Anyway, I've left it there for others to judge. Hope that's OK.

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 20:31, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with you, the combined icons haven't come out well at the standard resolution—they're fairly incomprehensible and just seem to add confusion. Would it be worth going back to what we had before until there's something that works? (Perhaps the aspect-ratio of a   P   on its own would work better). —Sladen (talk) 20:59, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I've played around a little more, trying to vary the PARKING.svg; curiously, it looks wrong if made to fill 100% of the frame, or even 75% of it. So I'm not convinced its any improvement over the original 'P', so it might be worth rolling back to that one. I tried with the horizontal grouping only, aswell as full enclosure. The ones that seemed to work were original dark, small 'P' with full enclosure, or lighter/large 'P' with horizontals. Can you think of any other things to try? —Sladen (talk) 22:58, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

On the subject of PANDR specifically, I think the PANDRl (left-facing one) looks betters; here the two components are facing inwards and being combined by the "+" sign. The PANDRr (right-facing one) reminds me of somebody who just missed a bus! —Sladen (talk) 23:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Well the version I uploaded did render very nicely at the small size (i.e. to fit within the hub borders), at least for me; the white border got merged with the blue border outside it and made a pleasing light blue. There was one tiny thing I didn't like which was that the descender on the P was one pixel too low i.e. hit the border at this small size, and I am happy to fiddle with that if we agree it is worth having the 'P' symbol in principle. I might just the "P" into a simple path, at the slight risk of it looking worse at larger sizes as the loop on the "P" I will likely make a perfect semicircle, but that is not really a problem here. I quite like the idea of the "P" because it is more generic to be used on railway (and other) diagrams, of course most stations do have parking but for stations that are specifically intended as kinda "park and ride" e.g. the "Parkway" stations.

I don't think it was a waste of time to make the park-and-ride symbols, though, if only to rule them out, and that they might find a use elsewhere. I would like to make the wheelebase longer and the rising tail shorter. Of course I do want to keep the basic symbol design, but needs must it should look nice, too, and at the moment that poor bus looks set to flip over at any moment.

I kinda agree about your "facing right" version. The problem here is that presumably that form is partly (mostly?) for right-hand-side driving, otherwise the passenger door is on the wrong side. Since, presumably, such a symbol if it exists in e.g. Continental europe still has the "P" first (I think "P" and "park" are fairly common regardless of language in e.g. French "parking", German "Parkplätze") because of left-to-right reading order, i.e not "ride and park". Sometimes the "P +" is placed above the bus, giving a squarer symbol, but that would be excrutiatingly small on these RDTs.

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 08:08, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Somersham street running St Ives street running St Ives St Ives Viaduct (River Great Ouse) Fen Drayton Lakes

I've added a "Park and Ride" sign diagram, File:Park and Ride.svg, which doesn't include the border for being able to put the hub overlay around it. (I also improved the treatment at the bottom of the bus, though it seems to have acquired a bit of a flat tyre.) This means it can be made taller (32px) for use in the text of the diagram (rather link the British Rail sign is). Here's an example of what it looks like. At 32px it is much more legible (and we can link it to the "Park and Ride" article.) The nominal size is 540px × 240px; the extra width gives more room for a nicer and more equal treatment of left and right hand margins. What do you think?

I've put it into a template, {{Park and Ride}}; it could be added to {{rail-interchange}} if you thought appropriate, but then we are kinda back to the BS icon ones which while not required by that template seem to be what that template is expected to generate.

As far as whether to revert etc. on the existing map, it might be a good idea to create a sandbox for these experiments, but in the first place I decided to change the template itself as, being more visible, it is likely to attract more attention. i.e. WP:BRD. Your parking symbol is fine but I think the P is too far left, and it should be a darker blue, IMHO. I am not too worried about making it the exact colour of UK signs since this is a fairly international sign, anyway signs fade and discolour etc, and different monitors/printers will render it differently depending on users' colour balance settings. But personally I think your blue is too light. Si Trew (talk) 09:07, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I edited the PARKING icon again. I think it renders much clearer now:

• The "P" is a polygon not a glyph from a font, so should render the same regardless of the fonts installed and the font renderer.
• All the coordinates are on integer boundaries in a 480px grid. In fact are on multiples of 5, so could be considered integer boundaries in a (480/5 = 96)px grid; I was hoping this would be helpful since 32px × 3 = 96px but actually may be counterproductive as the anti-aliasing will then ALWAYS find the coords to be on a pixel boundary. i.e. it would be better to stick the pixels in the middle of a 32px square rather than at the edge or a third of the way over.
• I've kept the rounded corners but made them smaller
• Like Sladen, I've tried to balance the "P" to make it *look* central, which means to put a little more blue space on the left and a little less on the right, because the loop on the P unbalances it to my eye.

I'm quite pleased with it now, but it is still not perfect, and when used with the hub overlay there's room for it to get 1px bigger (at 32px rendering). Perhaps it would be better making it nominally 500px square or perhaps even making it a prime number near 480 (479 or 487 might be worth a try). To the other extreme, we could try making it nominally 32px square. I don't think we're doing any harm here continuing to experiment in-place as nothing else is likely to be using it right now (I only put it in yesterday), and once we get it right I can see this could be useful on other RDTs. Si Trew (talk) 16:17, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I just realised one can't click on the Parking sign from here because the hub overlay occludes it. So I put it here. Si Trew (talk) 16:31, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Actual 20px size: exaggerated stem width and blend of arc with white-space.

Two notes: At the small sizes that this icon is actually going to be used at, the white arc of the appears (to the eyes) to blend with the white space outside of the box. The main vertical stem of the P is of a heavier weight than the horizontal aspects. At small sizes, this makes the difference between one pixel and two pixels. There's little point previewing or testing at icon at 128-pixels width, when it's going to be used at only 20 pixels wide! —Sladen (talk) 16:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Sladen it looks great to me at 20px. You can imagine from previous discussions this is exactly what we are trying to get right. I have a fifteen inch LCD monitor at 1024x768 and I used magnifier etc to check the pixellation. I use Mozilla Firefox.

I do not doubt what you say at all, but obviously there must be a difference then that we need to correct. I drew it from scratch and made them all five wide, and to my eye it seemed too wide on the loop, which is why I narrowed the horizontals to four. I think it might be worth a try to change the nominal size to a prime number. I am surprised that I am the first to think of this, surely I cannot be, but that way, WHATEVER size it is rendered at it cannot be exactly divisible, and so the renderer will alias it. To my eye, as it is on the diagram, it looks very nice. I also asked my Hungarian friend here if she could discern it and she thought it was perfectly clear (as you can imagine, I was definitely not prompting her or anything, "P" is the sign used in Hungary, too, and she told me what it meant before I asked her, so at leat on my screen it is legible and understandable, but I totally accept it may not be on yours, which I think is what we are trying to get at.

Do you want me to fiddle with it a little more or give you alternative versions or what? At this point, it probably is worth making a sandbox to do that.

I hope they don't actually start running buses down it because I use it as a rat run to get to work.

My sincere best wishes as always, thank you for all your effort here. I hope if we get it right, that symbol will be useful not just for this rather minor topic but elsewhere. Si Trew (talk) 00:29, 25 January 2010 (UTC)