[OSM-dev] Nearby similar street names (was Straw man design for OSM postcode database creator)

[David Earl]

On 03/02/2008 09:47, John McKerrell wrote:
> I haven't been paying attention to this so I'm not trying to pass  
> judgement here, the claim about "most towns, at least don't have more  
> than one street of any name" piqued my interest though. I just  
> checked, there's 15 Church Roads in Liverpool, 4 High Streets and 5-7  
> Station Roads. Just thought you might be interested in those stats  
> (found using the Multimap geocoder, unfortunately I haven't got  
> anything like all of those mapped).

That's true, but Liverpool is a big city which has suburbs. The name 
finder will tell you that it is High Street, near Olive Mount near 
Liverpool, which nearly always works(*). (Unfortunately Tom's 
presentation of the results on the OSM home page suppresses quite a lot 
of the context information that the namefinder supplies, so you don't 
get to see this, but you do if you do it from www.frankieandshadow.com/osm)

However, this is more than a problem of searching - it's more 
fundamental IMO - a problem for all users of the map, both in visual 
form and routing. It is particularly 'High Street' in the UK though 
there are others - Church Street/Road as John says, and Station Road are 
others.

If I find this situation in neighbouring villages (suburbs, boroughs...) 
I always disambiguate them, which helps the name finder, people looking 
at the map and so on.

So take the road which runs between Swavesey and Over in Cambridgeshire 
(http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.30784&lon=0.01034&zoom=15&layers=B0FT). 
It starts out Station Road in Swavesey, turns into Over Road after 
crossing the now disused railway line (**) and then becomes Station Road 
as it enters Over. So I've put "Station Road (Swavesey)" and "Station 
Road (Over)" on the map.

This is different from Eccles Road: 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=53.32364&lon=-1.96072&zoom=15&layers=B0FT

which runs from the centre of one town, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire 
to the centre of another, Whaley Bridge, a distance of about 6km. Unlike 
the Station Road's above the road is not two separate Eccles Roads in 
two towns, but (somewhat unusually) a road which maintains its name 
between settlements.

David

(*) if they are closer than 3km it doesn't because they won't be 
recorded separately unless they are disambiguated in the name.

http://www.frankieandshadow.com/osm/?find=Church+Road%2C+Liverpool gives 
Church Road, Walton-on-the-Hill; Church Road, Egerton Park; Church Road, 
Olive Mount (twice);  Church Road, Waterloo; Church Road, Wavertree 
Nook; and more...

(**) which will soon become the highway=bus_guideway we've discussed 
here before.