On 8/3/2020 6:07 AM, Sarah Hoffmann wrote:
There is some fuzzy matching, you can expect to work, for example abbreviations like street -> st or even New York -> NY. But going from ref=NY-214 to 'State Highway 214' is already a long stretch that requires special local knowledge.
Understood. And this is a little out of scope for the tagging list but I suspect this kind of long-stretch fuzzy matching for numbered routes will be necessary to return decent search results for a large portion of the rural USA -- and I'd guess similar problems will be found in other countries. At least for the New York State routes, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and HERE seem to get this right. I don't know of any OSM-centric maps that do, and I'm not savvy enough to know which are using Nominatim and which aren't. (Offhand, AI seems like overkill for this! The variations are pretty formulaic.)
Note that 'on the ground' doesn't always mean that there needs to be a physical sign. I consider an envelope (of a letter) as much on the ground as a street name you get by asking the inhabitants what they call the street they live on. If you want to express these nuances you can always use the different variants of name (offical_name, local_name, old_name, ...). So, yes, in your situation I'd leave out the name tag, add the ref and a couple of *_name tags that contain the names used in the addresses or between locals.
The inhabitants call it all of the above. Usually they'll just say "214" (pronounced "two-fourteen.") I'm not inclined to rifle through people's mail, but I assure you that every variation *except* the bare "214" will be written on envelopes and will be delivered. (Assuming the USPS survives the current attempt at extermination.)
Nominatim's algorithm currently is to match addr:street with any name or ref tag on a highway (including service, footway, path, etc.) It allows a little bit of fuzziness but ideally you use exactly the same spelling. If nothing is found, it simply uses the nearest street. There is another solution, if you really don't like the requirement of exactly matching names: associatedStreet relations. They do take precedence over the matching as explained above. Using those relations you can use a different addr:street name. Disclaimer: I have a deep dislike of associatedStreet relations and consequently they suffer from a bit of neglect in Nominatim. :)
Yes, I've been trying to avoid mentioning associatedStreet! I'm comfortable creating and maintaining these relations as a last resort, but heck they're annoying. We'd prefer a solution that would allow a casual mapper to add or fix addresses along a route. For now I've had a go with verbose explicit tagging using _name tags as you've suggested (ignoring JOSM's "alternative name without name" warnings): ref=NY 214 official_name=State Route 214 alt_name=Route 214;Highway 214;State Highway 214;New York 214;New York State Route 214 I've used the USPS-rectified format for the `official_name`, which isn't exactly right (`postal_name` might be a better tag) but seems close enough. It's unclear to me how useful it is to cram in all those semicolon-separated values under `alt_name`. Since this update, Nominatim is now giving decent (one block away) results for "58 State Route 214, Phoenicia NY" but nothing for "58 State Highway 214, Phoenicia NY" so maybe I just have to pick a single `alt_name` and maybe throw in a `local_name`? (Must confess, this sort of shoehorning starts to feel a little odd.) ...Regardless, if this general approach is considered valid and workable, then I'd like to propose the following answer to my original question: * Q) How should `addr:street` be tagged for an address along an unnamed way which is part of a numbered road-type route relation? * A) Check the way for alternative name tags. The official postal version of the street name may be tagged as `official_name`; if so that's a good value for `addr:street`. If the way has other name tags -- such as `alt_name`, `local_name`, `old_name`, or a language-specific name -- those values may be used. It's also possible to use the value of the way's `ref` tag, which should match the name of the route relation. Thanks all for your thoughtful replies, and let me know if this seems sane. Jason _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
