[Talk-us] Directional suffixes on roads: yes or no?

[James Mast]

Brian, I think you're confused here on this subject.  We're talking about roads that have stuff like 'NW' [1] in the name on street signs.  Nothing about divided roads.

-James

[1] - http://goo.gl/maps/wB8IR 

From: brianegge at gmail.com
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 11:32:54 +0000
To: elliott.plack at gmail.com; burkejf3 at gmail.com; talk-us at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Directional suffixes on roads: yes or no?

The FGDC doesn't make any reference to pre-directionals when used for a divided road (dual carriageway). The problem with these roads is addresses don't use the pre-directional, but road signs do. Here's one example:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/295032159#map=16/41.0291/-73.7359

The address of the highlighted building is "333 Westchester Avenue". Along this divided street, the odd building numbers are on the south side and the even numbers are on the north.
For divided highways, one may see a directional modifier on the signs, but on the map it's never included, or if it is included, is done through super relations. I.e., I-84 contains two relations, one is I-84 Eastbound and the other I-84 Westbound. The contains way's whose role is east/west, but are named I-84.
For divided roads, it seems it's best to put the directional modifier in the relation's role and omit it from the name. 

On Mon Dec 01 2014 at 12:56:30 AM Elliott Plack <elliott.plack at gmail.com> wrote:
Jack,

Good question. I come from a local government geographer perspective. I feel that the data should be as authoritative and official as possible with regard to naming. It's simple for a computer algorithm to abbreviate, ignore or omit information, but quite difficult to synthesize missing information.

The directional suffix you refer to is officially called a post directional. The Federal Geographic Data Committee definition is, "A word following the street name that indicates the directional taken by the thoroughfare from an arbitrary starting point, or the sector where it is located." See section 1.7.2.6 http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/projects/FGDC-standards-projects/street-address/05-11.2ndDraft.CompleteDoc.pdf

When you say that most people don't refer to it as such, that can definitely pose a challenge to cartographers. My opinion is to use the full name with the post directional and let map data users (or humans) choose what to ignore.

Kindly,

Elliott
On Sat, Nov 29, 2014 at 23:41 Jack Burke <burkejf3 at gmail.com> wrote:
Howdy, 



I have a question about how much effort should be put into adding directional suffixes to road names. 



Many counties around Atlanta have adopted directional suffixes for roads, both in incorporated areas as well as outside city limits. Usually all areas in the county use the same system, with directions denoted NE, SE, NW and SW from some standard point, although some cities tend to ignore the suffixes. Also, signage is inconsistent--some street signs bear the suffix while others on the same street don't. 



In most cases, the suffix is immaterial, and most people don't use it anyway.  Use of it or not won't affect directions most of the time,  although I know of a few specific cases where knowing the suffix can be important in finding the right location (is your house 100 Concord Road Southeast or  Southwest?).



The majority of the Tiger data doesn't include the suffix.



So, how much should I worry about the missing suffixes? Should they be included in the main name= tag? Or one of the other *name tags with the unsuffixed name in the name= tag. 



Because most people don't use the suffix, on some roads I've put the with-suffix name in the name= tag and the unsuffixed one in the short_name= tag, but I'm wondering if I should continue to bother. 



-jack





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