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Zones, roads and the route check

Draw the zones dispatch works in, store the road pieces your routes follow, and check which zones cover a point and how long a route takes.

For
DispatcherOwnerService advisor
Hosting
Any hosting
Devices
Web browser
Business
TowingTaxi and livery

Checked against Pop Dispatch 0.1.0

A zone is a named area made of corner points. Pop Dispatch uses zones to see where a pickup sits, to price taxi trips and to run airport lines. Roads are short pieces of road you store so that travel times follow your streets. The Zones and roads page holds both, with two small checks.

Before you start #

You need the dispatcher, advisor, manager or owner role. Have the corner points of each zone as latitude and longitude, for example from a map.

Steps #

  1. Choose Zones and roads in the menu. The table lists each zone with its priority, its number of points and whether it is in use.
  2. To add a zone, fill in Add a zone: the name, the priority and the corner points. Write one point on each line as latitude, longitude. At least three points make a zone. Choose Save. The zone shows in the table at once.
  3. When zones overlap, the one with the higher priority is used.
  4. To change a zone, choose Edit on its row, change the fields and choose Save. Untick Zone is in use to switch a zone off without deleting it.
  5. To delete a zone, choose Delete on its row and confirm.
  6. To see which zones cover a place, enter its latitude and longitude under Which zones cover a point and choose Check the point.
  7. To store roads, open the Roads section and add pieces: the start point, the end point and the length in metres. Pop Dispatch joins pieces that meet at the same point into a network.
  8. To try a route, enter a start and an end under Check a route and choose Check the route. The answer gives the distance, the minutes and how it was worked out: along your roads, or in a straight line with an allowance for turns.
Technical details
  • Routes: GET/POST /dispatch/zones, PATCH/DELETE /dispatch/zones/:id, GET/POST /dispatch/roads, DELETE /dispatch/roads/:id and POST /dispatch/route. All need the Tow group of roles.
  • A zone has between 3 and 500 points, each inside latitude -90 to 90 and longitude -180 to 180. A name holds up to 80 characters and is unique.
  • A route follows the stored roads when every stop is within 2,000 metres of a road piece. Otherwise it is a straight line multiplied by 1.25, at 13 metres a second.
  • The route check accepts an OpenStreetMap extract in the request. Only the node and way points are read, and the extract is used for that request only.
  • In the demo the zones are boxes around the points you enter, which the taxi fares use. A zone with an airport line cannot be deleted until the line is removed.

If something goes wrong #

  • "A zone needs between 3 and 500 points": add more points, one on each line.
  • "A zone point is outside the coordinate range": check that latitude comes first, then longitude.
  • "That name is already in use": zone names are unique. Pick another name.
  • "A road edge needs two coordinates and a length above zero": fill in both points and a length in metres.