[Talk-us] Fixing TIGER street name abbreviations

[David ``Smith'']

First, I apologize for posting my opinion without reading the entire
thread. It's a long thread, so I hope you understand.

Second, I'm okay with automated expansion of unambiguous road-type trailing
words.  Pk can be either park or pike, so leave that to local humans.
Leading road-type words like Avd for Avenida might also make sense, but I'm
not particularly familiar with how this looks in TIGER data.  This is
different from my earliest expressed opinion on the subject; the next point
is part of my revised position.

Third, I suggest retaining the abbreviated form in a tag like abbr_name.
Ideally, this should be the exact abbreviated form used on signs, if that's
consistent.  Getting this right requires local knowledge, but TIGER's
abbreviation might be better than nothing. I'm sure some will disagree with
that point.

Fourth, "Ave" isn't pronounced as-is everywhere. In the midwest we expand
it to Avenue in speech. (My cousin in the Boston area once mentioned "Mass
Ave" referring to Masachussetts Avenue, and to me it sounded like a single
word "Massaf"...)

Fifth, renderers must take care in abbreviating street names. For example,
Mapquest Open turns Lane Avenue into Ln Ave, where only the last word
should be abbreviated. To eliminate guesswork, renderers can use the
abbr_name tag, if present.
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