[Talk-GB] Balaam Street

[Mark Goodge]

On 05/01/2022 11:49, Paul Berry wrote:
> You should be able to get a definitive answer by contacting the body 
> responsible for highways in the area, which is Newham London 
> Borough Council, but I suspect their records are based on modern OS 
> mapping so the error (if it is one and it looks like it is) will 
> circulate forever.
> 
> However, given there appears to be zero signage on the ground, The 
> Olympic Route Network Designation Order 2009 legislation seems pretty 
> weighty in terms of authoritativeness.

OS OpenRoads calls it the B116. So do OS Mastermap, Google Maps, Bing 
Maps and the NSG. Obviously only OS OpenRoads is usable as a source for 
OSM. But, given that the non-open sources concur with it, then there's 
no justification for using any other number in OSM.

It is possible that the sequence of events which led to it being 
recorded in the NSG as the B116 were faulty. That's not unknown - there 
are other instances where data was wrongly transcribed when copying from 
original paper records into digital records. In this case, it's easy to 
see how B116 could be a typo for B166.

However, the NSG is considered definitive even if the process by which a 
record was added to it was faulty. So there is no dispute that the 
street *is*, now, the B116. The fact that it may, once, have been the 
B166, and the change was the result of a fat-fingered data entry clerk, 
does not mean that it is still the B166.

The only way it could become the B166 again is if the responsible 
authority (in this case, Newham) goes through the formal process of 
renumbering the street. There's no facility in the NSG to simply un-make 
a change that has been made; all you can do is make a subsequent change 
in the opposite direction. (In that respect, it's a bit like Wikipedia, 
or even OSM; you can make a change to the data as it is now, but the 
record of what it was before the change will still be there. So the NSG 
will always say that, on the 5th January 2022, Balaam Street was 
numbered as the B116).

Obviously, reverting to a historic name or number is one valid reason 
for making a change to the NSG. If it can be shown that the current name 
or number is a result of faulty record-keeping at some point in the 
past, then that's usually a good justification for making such a change. 
That's particularly the case if local residents want it changed back to 
what it once was. But there's no obligation on the part of the 
maintainer to make that change. They can just say, effectively, well sod 
it, nobody really cares, so it is what it is.

What we have, therefore, at the moment, is a street which is numbered 
the B116. How it got to be the B116 is a matter of speculation and, 
possibly, some historical interest. But, however it got that way, it is 
the B116.

Mark