[Talk-us] Street Naming Conventions

[Lord-Castillo, Brett]

The roads are two different road segments that do not connect.
The road that now bears all the "Olive" names was originally Plank Rd, the major road through St Louis County when it was rural. The main road went through several name changes (Plank Rd, Olive Rd, Olive St, Olive Street Rd, Olive Blvd). But, it also was realigned, creating orphaned segments of road with business on them. So, depending on when the section of road was orphaned, it picked up different names. All the orphaned segments became "Road" for their type. There is no more Plank Rd (or orphaned Plank Rd segments). But, going in order, orphaned segments became Old Olive Rd, Old Olive Street Rd, Old Olive St Rd (to differentiate that it was orphaned off Olive Street Rd instead of Olive St), and the currently alignment is Olive Blvd (but the next set of orphans should be Old Olive Boulevard Rd).

The only real way to tell the difference between Old Olive Street Rd and Old Olive St Rd is the address range.
Old Olive St Rd only exists in the 13000 blocks. (Notice that it is two separate street segments which do not cross Lindbergh Blvd/US 67)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&ll=38.682679,-90.485764&spn=0.003874,0.006539&t=h&z=18
Old Olive Street Rd only exists in the 10000 blocks.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&ll=38.67236,-90.405185&spn=0.015496,0.026157&z=16
There used to be an overlapping address range farther east (13005 Old Olive Street Rd is mapped below)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&q=13005+Old+Olive+Street+Road,+Olivette,+MO
But it was eliminated when a mini-mall was built over it.

The only real problem between the two street names comes when you try to find their intersections with Olive Blvd. Notice that Google has "fixed" this by turning Old Olive St Rd into Frontage Rd where it intersects Olive Blvd. (And if you search for any variant of "Old Olive" as a street by itself, it always returns only Old Olive Street Rd
I think Old Olive Rd might exist in addresses only now and not have any physical road segments any more, but I'm not sure. If you follow Olive Blvd, you will find a lot of orphaned segments from old alignments with no names on Google Maps. The former Plank Rd inside St Louis City is still called Olive St and no longer connects to Olive Blvd, but does vaguely align with it.

Anyway, keep in mind all of these various examples I've used over the last few weeks come from just one county (one big and relatively old county, but just one county). There are likely many many more exceptions out there among the thousands of counties in the US.
--Brett

Brett Lord-Castillo
Information Systems Designer/GIS Programmer
St. Louis County Police
Office of Emergency Management
14847 Ladue Bluffs Crossing Drive
Chesterfield, MO 63017
Office: 314-628-5400
Fax: 314-628-5508
Direct: 314-628-5407



-----Original Message-----

Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 16:44:43 -0400
From: Nathan Edgars II <neroute2 at gmail.com>
Subject: [Talk-us] Street Naming Conventions
To: talk-us at openstreetmap.org
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Lord-Castillo, Brett wrote:
>But another good one close to us is "Old Olive Street Rd" and "Old Olive St Rd" (both official names for different sections of the road). These two streets run parallel to Olive St, Olive Street Rd, and Olive Blvd (all three of these are different roads).

So if "Old Olive Street Rd" and "Old Olive St Rd" are different, how
do you distinguish them in speech? Or are they actually
interchangeable names, as would seem logical (in other words, one or
the other may be "official", but both are unambiguous and correct for
all practical purposes)?