Discussion regarding airside people movers

[Duke87]

Another point of discussion deserving its own thread.

My take here is that it's fair game to include landside people movers as anyone can ride them at any time the same as any other transit system. Airside people movers, however, I do not think should be included in the project on the grounds that they cannot be ridden without a valid plane ticket to, from, or through the airport where they operate - which represents an access restriction and we don't want to include restricted access things. Most of these systems are also relatively small/short and thus present a scope creep problem too.

But like all important decisions this should be made by consensus, so feel free to chime in and vote in the poll.

[cl94]

This is tricky, because we already have some airside people movers in the browser.

I'm open to whatever, but personally, I count airside people movers as a transit system in my own stats. They are short, sure, but they exist and aren't that much shorter than some of the lines in the browser already. Heck, the ATL Plane Train is longer than multiple routes we already count. I also don't love counting landside people movers and not airside ones; this becomes splitting hairs solely based on access instead of what it is. Anyone can buy a plane ticket and get on the train. This isn't like the US Capitol Subway or other private/highly restricted systems, which you need to be a member or employee of Congress to ride.

My standard of significance would be "can anyone ride this without being an employee or guest somewhere?" If the only barrier is purchasing a ticket, it's no harder than riding some long-distance rail lines, which we are already including in some countries.

[Jim]

It doesn't matter to me if they're included or not, but this is another place where the potential future option to restrict stats and maps to a subset of the data on demand (https://github.com/TravelMapping/Web/issues/360) might be useful.

Unfortunately, there are no plans to move forward with this idea any time soon, but it's something to think about.

[the_spui_ninja]

Anyone can buy a plane ticket and get on the train. This isn't like the US Capitol Subway or other private/highly restricted systems, which you need to be a member or employee of Congress to ride.

My standard of significance would be "can anyone ride this without being an employee or guest somewhere?" If the only barrier is purchasing a ticket, it's no harder than riding some long-distance rail lines, which we are already including in some countries.

I agree with this.

[si404]

It doesn't matter to me if they're included or not, but this is another place where the potential future option to restrict stats and maps to a subset of the data on demand (https://github.com/TravelMapping/Web/issues/360) might be useful.

It's probably a good idea to have them all in one system (or at least one system per country/similar) to make them easy to ignore.

[Duke87]

"No" won the poll 2-1.

Any further objections before we make this official?

[the_spui_ninja]

I feel like more people replied than voted in the poll, but that's just me.

Maybe we put them all in a "US Airport Trams" (or something similar) system and make it Tier 5, thus if system exclusion is implemented they can be ignored. I know whenever I visit a new airport if my layover is long enough I'll go ride the tram even if my connecting gate is 2 feet away.

[Duke87]

I feel like more people replied than voted in the poll, but that's just me.

3 people voted, 5 replied, but 2 of those 5 expressed not having a preference so it adds up.

Happy to leave this open for a bit longer to get more opinions in.


I do agree if we do include them they should go in a "grab bag" system rather than each getting their own. This would also permit discretion in excluding some smaller such systems rather than having a commitment to being exhaustive.

[michih]

We do now have the SkyLine people mover at Frankfurt Airport in RB. We do not have the MiniMetro people mover in RB. It's just north of the airport. I think that we should either have both, or none in RB.

btw, the German wikipedia article above does also mention that the same people mover type is installed at Perugia Airport, Zürich Airport, Pisa Airport and Cairo Airport (the latter seems to be iin service, German wiki seems to be outdated).

[si404]

We do now have the SkyLine people mover at Frankfurt Airport in RB. We do not have the MiniMetro people mover in RB. It's just north of the airport. I think that we should either have both, or none in RB.

I'll add the other people mover. I just didn't see it on the map, so short it is.

Perugia Airport

The city, not the airport - also in browser.

Zürich Airport

Airside so didn't add

Pisa Airport

In browser

Cairo Airport

Didn't look at as African and we're not there yet

[the_spui_ninja]

Zürich Airport

Airside so didn't add

Did we ever come to a consensus about including airside people movers? General opinion seems to be ambivalent from what I can tell.

If we want to go through with this I can whip up a "usaaair" system fairly quick.

[Jim]

Whatever is decided - get it into a TM Rail manual.  We seem to be doing an awful lot of developing of systems and attracting a good amount of users without having some decisions made and without them being documented well.

[Duke87]

Whatever is decided

Well that's kinda the problem here - no consensus has emerged as to whether airside people movers should be in or out.

Currently they aren't, so that's the status quo, but the Draft Manual does not specifically address this.

Still, I'm going to go ahead and propose a more general addition in that thread.