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

Brian M. Sperlongano zelonewolf at gmail.com
Tue Dec 13 16:07:33 UTC 2022


Thanks John and others for the deep dive.

I did some poking around and found several cities in Alberta[1] and British
Columbia[2] that use the fully-spelled out "Northwest" rather than "NW",
exclusively, as well as a few places that use a mix of both styles.
Naturally this list grows much larger when you look for the simpler
cardinal directions of "North", "South", "East", and "West"

Below is a query you can stick into overpass turbo to look at the data
yourself.  For example, in Saskatchewan there are 1400 streets that have an
"East" suffix.

[out:json][timeout:3600];
{{geocodeArea:Name_of_province}}->.a;
way[name~" East$"](area.a);
(._;>;);
out skel qt;

Does the Canadian mapping community feel that these suffixes,
fully-spelled-out in these and other locations in Canada, are in error
and require correction?  If so, where does a mapper go to determine the
"correct" variant of the road's name? Is it "Canada Post", and if so, is
that a source that can be used for OSM?

If these are not errors, can anyone supply a rule that states which cities
and/or provinces in Canada should use the abbreviated forms and which
places should use the fully-spelled out variant?  Or should these be
abbreviated for all of Canada?  Or does it differ from location to location
and a mapper must look it up in some sort of database?  This information is
important not just for mappers, but also for data consumers, who need this
information to write location-specific processing.

Please forgive the constant barrage of questions, as I'm trying to
understand the exact, specific rule used for the naming convention so that
it can be properly documented.


[1] Alberta:
Drumheller - https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/51.4661/-112.7082
Medicine Hat - https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/50.0519/-110.6946

[2] British Columbia
Creston - https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/49.0999/-116.5228
Chetwynd - https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/55.69877/-121.63603
Salmon Arm - https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/50.6982/-119.2979

On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 5:14 AM john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:

> My personal view is in Alberta they should remain NW etc.
>
> This is what they are called locally.  Canada Post postcode lookup which
> is as close to an official name as you'll find in Canada uses them as they
> are and Canada Post does spell out rd etc.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> On Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 12:21 AM , <iain at monkeyface.ca> wrote:
>
>> Hi Brian,
>>
>> I think I will weigh in on this conversation.
>>
>> I think this conversation has been going on for at least 122 years…… From
>> what I can actually find.
>>
>> To clear up the “sources” instead of internet lore they come from the
>> Alberta survey Act. The ATS (has already been mentioned here) and the
>> Hudson Bay reserve plan (still in use today) and the Dominion Land Survey.
>>
>> After the start of this thread I did some digging around as to the “why”
>> to see what I could come up with. As we seem to just use this and it is
>> legislated. And I think for this thread it comes down to when a cardinal
>> direction is not a cardinal direction but a name. This seems to have come
>> from a disagreement between CP rail and Saskatchewan and Alberta surveyors.
>> And the legislation was changed from a cardinal Northwest to NW and should
>> never be expanded reason being is the pattern of NW-SW-NW-SW that would
>> happen every quarter mile if you walked Alberta North to South. So the
>> cardinal system was abandoned and you just write NW. This became the legal
>> land description.
>>
>> The legislation we have in Alberta is the same as Saskatchewan and
>> Manitoba. Parts of BC also follow this but I didn’t look to closely into
>> BC. There are exceptions to these rules that are also defined in the Survey
>> Act as well as the ATS. Machine Hat was already mentioned as an odd ball
>> and they are right it is excluded. So is Fort MacMurray. Pierre mention
>> that Quebec does not abbreviate roads. And neither does the French
>> community of Beaumont in Alberta. I believe all road signs are in French
>> there. This also applies to any federal land so Indian reserves, the the
>> air ranges are out as well.
>>
>> That said most things are very well defined in legislation. But there are
>> some grey areas. Deerfoot Trail for example. This was a federal road at one
>> point. Signs are simply north and south. I would question if Deerfoot
>> should have Deerfoot SE in the name at all. I would also as about 16 ave
>> where it becomes the transcanada.
>>
>> If anyone wants to see the physical remains of this dispute they can look
>> at 16 avenue SW and 7 street SW. 16 ave just disappears from where CP rail
>> put it and the Alberta Surveyors corrected it. Alberta also doesn’t use UTM
>> coordinate system…. We made our own because…. Well because we have to be
>> difficult. It is the 3TM and it is used everywhere outside of Edmonton and
>> Calgary. Also we changed our map projections between forested areas and
>> grasslands
>>
>> So when NW is just a place holder and not a direction is that this comes
>> down to for a lot of people in the prairies.
>>
>> Iain
>>
>> On Dec 12, 2022, at 9:20 PM, Brian M. Sperlongano <zelonewolf at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Again "someone told me something offhand" is not useful or helpful for
>> public discussion.
>>
>> If the Calgary mapping community has a convention to map streets exactly
>> according to a specific government database or to satisfy a specific data
>> consumer, then I await their description of specifically what the standards
>> are so that mappers can map freely to documented standards without being
>> harassed.
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 11:17 PM Michael Stark <michael60634 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hey Brian,
>>>
>>> I believe you accidentally replied to me specifically instead of
>>> clicking "reply all".
>>>
>>> "Anecdotal stories which can't be publicly examined are not helpful."
>>>
>>> I don't know the name of the software in question. All I know is that
>>> the person that uses this software contacted me after my changes broke it.
>>> I don't know if he wants to be identified here as he has told me that he
>>> has had past issues with mailing list, so I have not mentioned his name.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 9:54 PM Michael Stark <michael60634 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hey Brian,
>>>>
>>>> I'll jump in to answer your questions.
>>>>
>>>> The names are abbreviated in Calgary (and most other places in Alberta)
>>>> because that's how they are officially written. It's not something local
>>>> mappers decided.
>>>>
>>>> I don't have a specific example, but the mapper I was talking to whose
>>>> software broke works in the oil and gas industry. I assume the software
>>>> broke because the OSM names didn't match the official names from the
>>>> provincial or local government.
>>>>
>>>> I hope these answers are helpful.
>>>>
>>>> Warm regards,
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 9:39 PM Brian M. Sperlongano <
>>>> zelonewolf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 10:17 PM Hoser AB <hoserab1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> 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.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm sorry, but this does not answer my question.  I'll state it again:
>>>>>
>>>>> Is the decision to abbreviate names in Calgary based on something
>>>>> different about Calgary from the rest of the world, or is it just a
>>>>> convention that local mappers have chosen based on preference?  Please
>>>>> forgive me for asking this directly, as it's the crux of the discussion.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Can you give a specific example of software that will break by
>>>>> following the global convention to abbreviate names, or is this just a
>>>>> hypothetical?  How does that software deal with the rest of the world using
>>>>> expanded (non-abbreviated) names?
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>> Talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
>>>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
>>>>>
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