Mapping public transport is considered as hard to do. Cycling itineraries aren' t entirely trivial either. PT_Assistant is meant to help to make mapping these more efficient.

Firstly it visualises the itineraries, focusing on what matters for public transport, i.e. numbered stop sequences. highlighted ways, so the itinerary you are currently working on stands out.

Secondly, warnings are reported in the validator about 'gaps', vehicles traveling against oneway traffic, or not heeding turn restrictions and several more that are next to impossible to achieve without some extra programming.

Last summer a routing helper was added, which means a lot less manual splitting of ways. Also, if an itinerary is mapped once and (parts of it) are used by other lines, the helper will propose larger sequences of ways to add in one go.

It is already possible to use PT_Assistant for mapping walking and cycling routes, but that functionality will be extended further this summer. The reason to integrate it in the same plugin, even if the underlying principles differ, is that it fixing the public transport lines, but leaving other route relations in a "broken" state is not very nice either.

Last year a "wizard" was added to help set up your JOSM environenment with MapCSS styles, Overpass Queries, Oneclick settings and accompanying toolbar buttons.

So, if you want to learn more about how it can help you map route relations, come and join us, preferably with a laptop with JOSM installed on it.