[Talk-ca] What do I poutine the name tag of a road with a suffix?

[Hoser AB]

Well Brian, the answer to question 1 is pretty straight forward: I don't
really know whether it's more or less ignored or accepted in Washington,
District of Columbia (abbreviations are a no-no, don'tcha know? ;) ). And I
don't really care either.

With respect to question 2, there are users of OSM data for whom making a
seemingly subtle change from e.g. "37 Street SW" to "Thirty-seventh Street
Southwest" is going to break the functionality of whatever it is they're
using it for, which is essentially why I commented on Michael’s change in
the first place. Michael shared a quote from correspondence with another
mapper: "You are correct services using OSM may not know what NW is. But in
Alberta [it] is treated as the name and not really a direction at all. And
this becomes an issue for services that are trying to use Alberta (and
other areas to be honest) without understand[ing] this slight difference.
This is also my problem. With the global change to OSM I can no longer use
it as a data source as the names are simply wrong. This is how we name
everything from road[s] to well sites." It's not just a matter of "local
mapper preference", or of a user finding a preferred renderer that will
abbreviate the quadrant suffix to their liking: it's breaking functionality
for other users of OSM data, in much the same way the abbreviated form
"breaks" TTS routing.

I appreciate the insight Minh has shared, and I can imagine he's probably
very tired of having to re-hash the same discussions about this over and
over and over. I also believe "there are many possible solutions to any
given problem", with tradeoffs to be made between them. I sympathize with
the concerns about TTS engines being limited, and the programmers using
these TTS engines being somewhat limited in their capacity to "improve" the
TTS "logic" and having to simply make-do.



That said, our discussion seems to boil down to this: if it's not named as
spoken, TTS generally won't work. But unless it's named as typically
written, many data users won't be able to parse the name at all. The OSM
"global policy" seems to express an implicit preference for TTS to be
accommodated and leaves it up to other data users to parse the written
names. If a TTS engine can't figure out "NW" = "northwest" that's a
problem, but if another data user can't figure out "northwest" = "NW": too
bad, so sad.



The mapper going by the username tastrax raised an interesting
hypothetical: what about another sub-key for the quadrant? I don't know if
that had ever been considered before, but it could substantially simplify
things. Even for routers using TTS. As spoken, routing software
could/should typically drop the quadrant entirely anyway.





Oh, and for Minh’s knowledge: U-turns in Alberta are generally prohibited
too. :P It’s pretty much the same rules as in BC: in urban areas you can
only do them at intersections that are not controlled by traffic signals
(unless specifically permitted; there are for example U-turn-specific
traffic signals on 17 Ave SE in Calgary), but NOT at intersections with
alleys or driveways, and in rural areas you **can** do them in between
intersections but NOT on a curve or approaching the crest of a hill. This
is something most routers do not take into account and often end up giving
illegal directions to drivers in Alberta (and BC). It has become something
of a running joke that the people who get the substantial tickets and
demerit points on their licence for pulling illegal u-eys feign to the
local constabulary: "My GPS told me to!".

On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 6:36 PM Brian M. Sperlongano <zelonewolf at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 8:08 PM Hoser AB <hoserab1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Brian happened to provide examples from the US of A to illustrate that in
>> said country they've made the choice to "unabbreviate" where possible, and
>> that's fine and dandy; it doesn't matter much to me what the nomenclature
>> is in Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America (although
>> I have been to the White House and happen to know that the street signage
>> quite consistently uses abbreviations, i.e. "Pennsylvania Ave NW" :P).
>>
>
> Since Washington DC is a city that we have both visited, Would you
> elaborate on the comparison between Washington DC, and Calgary?
>
> So far, from this thread, I understand that:
>
> 1. Both places abbreviate their street names and quadrant suffix on signs
> (e.g. 6 ST NW)
> 2. In both places, residents verbally speak out the expanded version of
> suffixes (e.g. "Sixth Street northwest")
>
> References [1] and [2] show the street signs for 6th Street NW in both
> Calgary and Washington, respectively, as well as their differences in
> tagging, "6th Street Northwest" in Washington and "6 Street NW" in Calgary.
>
> Until now, I wasn't aware of the tagging difference of "6" vs "6th" in the
> name tag, but please also consider that difference in your response!
>
> Specifically, I would like to understand:
>
> 1. Is there any difference between the two cities in how the street
> suffixes are signed, spoken, or understood locally that would give rise to
> the differences in how the name tag on these streets are tagged between the
> two cities?
> 2. If not, is there a reason, other than local mapper preference, to tag
> streets in this way?
>
> It is important to understand whether we are simply documenting a choice
> made by mappers in different locations or whether there is a substantive
> difference in the objects we are trying to map.  If there is a substantive
> difference, then this difference needs to be documented so that mappers can
> better understand when to apply expansion rules and when to abbreviate.  If
> this difference is merely a local choice, then it's important to document
> the boundary within which the normal global conventions do not apply.  Is
> it only Calgary?  All of Alberta?  All of Canada?  Etc.
>
>
> [1] 6 ST NW (Calgary)
>
> https://www.google.com/maps/@51.0582943,-114.0780452,3a,75y,214.2h,86.38t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sToSlTcrEKtlH6CSBJA5klA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
> OSM: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/4818657 "6 Street NW"
>
> [2] 6 ST NW (Washington, DC)
>
> https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9139575,-77.019923,3a,75y,288.91h,97.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAe9hRMIt4x7z9qlvxJV12w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
>
> OSM: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/45839046 "6th Street Northwest"
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/attachments/20221212/c09f5370/attachment-0001.htm>