Metro lines of a city

Public transport lines are relations of type route. Their members are the tracks (ways) and stops (nodes). out geom returns the members with coordinates, ready to draw.

The query

[out:json][timeout:60];
area["name"="Paris"]["admin_level"="8"]["wikidata"="Q90"]->.a;
rel["route"="subway"](area.a);
out geom;

Run it

Live result from overpass.ch, cached for up to 12 hours. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How it works

1. Ten other places called Paris also have admin_level 8. ["wikidata"="Q90"] picks the French capital.
2. rel["route"="subway"] finds route relations. A relation counts as inside the area when one of its members is.
3. Each direction of a line is usually its own relation, so expect two per line.
4. out geom; adds coordinates to every member. The colour tag holds the colour of the line.

Variations

• Trams, buses and trains: route=tram, route=bus, route=train. See tram network.
• Just the line names and colours: out tags; is much smaller.

Run it from your code

curl https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter \
  --data-urlencode 'data@query.overpassql'

import requests

query = open("query.overpassql").read()
r = requests.post("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter",
                  data={"data": query}, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json()["elements"][:3])

const res = await fetch("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter", {
  method: "POST",
  body: new URLSearchParams({ data: query }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
console.log(await res.json());

Save the query as query.overpassql. It works the same in Overpass Turbo, QGIS and JOSM.