Some days ago, I searched online for a bus route that was supposed to be newly introduced to go from Kilkenny to New Ross. I didn’t find it, but I found another one which pleased me even more which goes from Kilkenny to Fiddown (ref=891). The reason it pleases me is that the other route is already partly covered by another bus company and I don’t really need it, and the 891 covers a route that goes past several historical sites and at least two hiking routes. Since I don’t drive, I will certainly avail of it myself. I don’t mind organizing myself lifts, and I enjoy the company of my “drivers”, but sometimes it’s good to be more independent. For context, the bus route started on January 20th 2025.

Street-level imagery

So I decided to track it, because I don’t really trust Transport for Ireland’s route maps, and I can’t be sure that they didn’t use proprietary map material to provide the routes online, even though their background map is OSM. But I have seen routes on their website which they seemed to have taken out of thin air which had nothing to do with the actual route the bus takes.

From the bus schedule, I had a fair idea of where the bus was going to go, and I had travelled most of the roads already and captured street-level-imagery, but I thought it would be no harm to do it again. Of course, that is a bit tricky on the bus, and I couldn’t ask the driver to leave the GoPro Max on the roof of the bus. I had brought the magnetic foot, but turns out, there is very little plane metal space on the bus. So the setup was a bit wobbly, but it worked. It only swayed in the bendier bends.

It’s partly held in place by my bag:

I was sure it was gonna crash at some point, especially with some of the bumpier rural roads, but it didn’t.

This is the sequence where I had least coverage before.

The battery lasted just about long enough.

As usual, I uploaded to Mapillary first and then to Panoramax. I might have forgotten to change the viewpoint angle on the Mapillary imagery… At least on Panoramax, I could go in and change it later.

Drive-by mapping

Speed limits and road ref numbers

A project I’m working on at the moment is adding maxspeed to the rural roads. On February 7th 2025, a directive from the Department for Transport lowered the speed limit on the “local rural roads” (the ones where the reference number starts with L and those without any reference number, I presume - I’m still waiting for a reply from the Department for Transport) from 80 km/h to 60km/h. If you’ve ever driven on one of those, you’ll wonder how anyone in their right state of mind would even attempt to go at 80 km/h, but that was the law. We’re (OSM) still missing a lot of the L numbers nationwide, because of course, the government is not able to provide them as open data, that would be too easy. So, that was one of the things I looked out for - missing L numbers. It would have saved me a lot of frustration, if they were displayed closer to the junction in OSMAnd, but I had to long-click on everyone of them where it wasn’t displayed to see whether it was already mapped or not. I also added notes for missing speed limit signs, even where they wrongly still displayed 80 km/h. I mapped those on the desktop PC without the wrong speed limit, just to know where the traffic signs are for later reference and to be able to split the highway at the correct location. I’m also not quite sure how to map speed limit signs which have different speed limits on the front and back, bc I can’t use direction then.

Bus stops

I used OSMAnd for tracking the routes, adding notes and adding the odd POI (post boxes, defibs, wayside shrine etc).

When I got on the bus, I asked the bus driver to point out where the new bus stops are, because I did not expect bus stop signs for most of them. #Ireland #experience He said I was right, because it was “a new bus route”. Sure, that makes sense. We wouldn’t want people to know where the bus stops are to promote the route and establish sustainable routines, would we?

Anyways, some locations are therefore also only estimates, because he didn’t slow down, and just told me the name of the place in passing. Someone will have to re-survey in about a year, when there is a slightly better chance of bus stop signs, but I have my doubts that they will ever come. As a Canadian friend put it, “oral tradition is still very strong in Ireland”.

The “highlight” of the trip was an unscheduled excursion into the bus depot, because the heating on the bus wasn’t working, and the gaggle of bus drivers (four at some point on the bus) thought it would help to add water somewhere. It didn’t. So, four hours at about 8°C. The sacrifices we make for the general good. But the bus depot is mapped now which one would not locate from the street.

Here’s the route, if anyone is interested.

construction

I also spotted a couple newly built or under construction houses for which I also left notes. Most of them are not visible on the outdated aerial imagery yet, so I drew estimates and left fixmes.

Addresses

I think I spotted one house number and three house names which I added to the map. Because, unlike in other countries like Lithuania or the Netherlands, the government also doesn’t publish open address data. Do I sound frustrated? That’s because I am.

I think in total, I left 7 pages of notes: Notes by b-unicycling.

All in all, I’m glad to report that I was not the only passenger on the bus; there was a bus driver in training and for most of the journey, there were one to four other people with me. The word has spread already, it seems.