[Talk-us-massachusetts] Would using alt_name help?

[Greg Troxel]

Peter Dobratz <peter at dobratz.us> writes:

> When mapping things, I have typically been putting name or alt_name on
> numbered roads to match what is in addr:street.  I look at businesses along
> the road to see how they refer to their address and also the USPS zip code
> lookup tool to see the USPS standard format for the address.  The value
> that goes in addr:street has abbreviations expanded, converts from upper
> case to title case, and may include directional prefixes and/or suffixes.

Is the USPS database ok for OSM use?   It has seemed that USPS is not
clearly part of the federal government in a straightforward way, and
thus not clear to me that their data is PD.

> So, you have something like "Route 6" in addr:street, but it could have
> easily been something else like "Highway 6", "State Road 6", "State Route
> 6", "Massachusetts Route 6" "South Highway 6 Northwest".  Only one of these
> forms is the standard form for that particular address.

That still leaves us with "is that a name for the road, or something
that is merely used in addresses".    I have come to believe pretty
strongly that it is incorrect to insist that addr:street in an address
match exactly a name of the road.

> The USPS has a page listing standard variations on numbered routes as part
> of addresses:
>
> https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28apf.htm
> (Interesting that USPS prefers to sometimes abbreviate ROAD as RD and
> sometimes prefers unabbreviated)
>
> For me, the different ways of naming the numbered route is significant
> enough to warrant adding it as a name or alt_name to the Way for the road
> itself.

I have the opposite reaction :-)  Which is that

1) if there is a standard form, and a bunch of other usages that are
more or less by that definition unpreferred, we shouldn't accomodate the
other usage in road names, because that just adds complexity.

2) If there are typical variations, perhaps those should be encoded in
programs that do search, vs expanding them in the database.
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