[Talk-us] Feature proposal: proposed expanded address tagging scheme for US

[Paul Norman]

> From: Mark Gray [mailto:mark-osmus at hspf.com]
> Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Feature proposal: proposed expanded address
> tagging scheme for US
> 
> In taginfo, I see there is already some use:
> 86023 instances of associatedStreet
> 14921 instances of Street
> This is still small compared with:
> 15461897 addr:street
> 
> Every time I tag addr:street, I wonder how well it works. What will
> happen when someone decides to expand the name of the street or edit a
> prefix or suffix? How does an address stay associated with a street when
> the link between them, the name, can be edited in either place while no
> change is made to all the other things on this street? Each addr:street
> could contain its own unintentional variation of the street name.

Having talked to people who process the data for use with geocoding,
addr:street is a lot more robust than associatedStreet relations and a lot
easier to process.

Auto-complete helps with name consistency. 

I think the reason is that addr:street can be broken each time the name of a
road changes while associatedStreet can be broken each time someone edits
the street or address for any reason.

Although addresses aren't fixed in practice streets aren't often renamed and
every way split has a good chance of breaking the relation.