Key:zone:De Lijn

Description

Used to mark tariff zone information on bus stops of De Lijn, a public transport company serving Flanders in Belgium. Some lines extend into the Brussels region and to Breskens, Tilburg and Maastricht in The Netherlands.

Rationale

The bus stops of De Lijn have zone numbers. When we started mapping those stops, we naively used zone=* on them.

Later on it became apparent this was not the best idea. Zones of different public transport companies overlap, and the zones are not always in accordance. So it became necessary to be able to specify the zone per operator.

Hence the use of

• zone:De_Lijn=* and
• zone:TEC=*.

• MIVB/STIB don't have zones, although buses that travel out of the Brussels region, like the ones serving the airport do have specific tariffs.
• In Brussels there is a zone in which MIVB's tickets are also valid on buses of De Lijn and TEC, as well as between train stations in 'The urban area'. We don't have a way to tag the stops and stations for which this applies yet.
• In The Netherlands zone=* still seems in use for this.

Internally De Lijn uses a 4 digit zone numbering system, like TEC, but we aren't privy to that information. Also, since February 2015 the zone information has become moot, as now there is a time limit, instead of a distance based tarification. The 2 digit zone numbers are still marked on the stop's signs though.

In Belgium bus and tram stops are mapped exclusively on nodes. All the details are added to the node, next to the way:

• highway=bus_stop
• public_transport=platform
• bus=yes

or

• railway=tram_stop
• public_transport=platform
• tram=yes