[Talk-us] Peculiar addressing in Burr Ridge, IL

[Alan Mintz]

In Burr Ridge, IL: 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=41.7504&lon=-87.92916&zoom=16&layers=M

I-55 runs approximately E/W and there are frontage roads on either side of 
it, apparently named North Frontage Road and South Frontage Road.

Along them, there are businesses with addresses like "16W561 South Frontage 
Rd" and "601 South Frontage Road" (on the next block). If you feed the 
16W561 address to http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp, it confirms it is 
deliverable*. If you leave off the 16W prefix, it gives the same error that 
it gives for addresses where it does not know of that particular address, 
but it does fall within an acceptable range for that street.

Perhaps conversely, it accepts "601 South Frontage Road" as deliverable, 
but if you give it 16W601... instead, it converts it to 601 and confirms it 
is deliverable. This conversion is normally seen where there are naming 
discrepancies for a street (like St. vs. Ave., or during the transition 
time of an old name to a new name).

Any clue what these inconsistent 16W prefixes are? It's not a PLSS 
designation because the area is around T38N/R11E.


*"deliverable" means it does not give an error, which, in my experience, 
means it is a valid address point in their database.



--
Alan Mintz <Alan_Mintz+OSM at Earthlink.net>