>For example if K4A 1M7 exists in the map then it would be reasonable to assume that K4A 1M6 - 1M1 should also exist so could be looked for.
Not necessarily. The first three characters are province, region indicators. The last three are based on Canada Post's routes/delivery zones. They create new ones all the time and probably not sequentially so people need to subscribe to their shitty 5000$/year service On Thu., Oct. 3, 2019, 12:23 a.m. Kyle Nuttall, <[email protected]> wrote: > I've found a good resource to use is a business website. Particularly a > store with multiple locations, a mall directory, or a BIA. They have > several postal codes that are associated with their respective addresses. > > Unfortunately it does require manual work (or you could pair a scrapper > with a geocoder to do the tedious part) but given there is no available > datasets we're licenced to use currently, it's the only public resource I > know of where you can get pockets of postal codes. > > As more and more get added, the zones will begin to reflect their true > shape more accurately and it'll be easier to extrapolate. > > I know it's not the best answer but any bit helps I suppose. > > On Oct. 2, 2019 21:33, John Whelan <[email protected]> wrote: > > I had long discussions with Canada Post about postcodes years ago. I was > working with Treasury Board standards group at the time looking at > addressing standards and I'm very aware of the limitations. > > Rural post codes are very definitely an issue and not all postcodes used > by Stats Canada and other government departments for example are physical > locations. > > Open Data would be nice but realistically it isn't going to happen in the > short term. > > Having said that what is doable is spotting postcodes that do exist but > are not in OpenStreetMap then tagging a building with an address that > includes a postcode in that postcode. > > For example if K4A 1M7 exists in the map then it would be reasonable to > assume that K4A 1M6 - 1M1 should also exist so could be looked for. > > Cobourg is an example where there are far fewer postcodes than one might > like to see. > > Cheerio John > > > > Kevin Farrugia wrote on 2019-10-02 8:53 PM: > > I don't want to rain on the postal code party, and maybe I'm a little > jaded from using the data, but I use the Postal Code Conversion File (PCCF) > from Statistics Canada (who get it from Canada Post) at work. In general I > would say that the postal code points are in mediocre shape. > > Some things I've noticed about the data and postal codes in general: > * There is usually one postal code point per postal code, although there > are cases where there can be several points for a postal code. For > example, with some postal codes, if you were to make them polygons, would > generate multiple polygons that are intersected by other postal codes. > * Postal codes, especially rural ones, pop in and out of existence and so > are a little harder to track and are less permanent than addresses. > * Postal codes will sometimes jump from one side of a road (even > municipality) between years as they try to improve accuracy. > I would check out the Limitations section if you'd like to see more: > https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/assets/cpc/uploads/files/marketing/2017-postal-code-conversion-file-reference-guide-en.pdf > > Forward Sortation Areas do exist as open data through Statistics Canada - > StatsCan generates these FSA polygons based on respondents of the Census. > There are two limitations to this dataset on which I would advise against > importing it into OSM: > 1) Since businesses do not respond to the Census, they generally do not > have FSAs for large industrial areas. These areas are covered by the > nearest FSA that they know about/can define, but this can also cause some > movements of boundaries from Census to Census. > 2) Because postal codes are created for the purpose of mail sortation and > delivery, the FSA boundaries StatsCan is able to create are not exact. > Here's the reference document if you're interested: > https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/92-179-g/92-179-g2016001-eng.htm > > If at some point they did release it as open data, it might be decent > enough for the purposes of general geocoding in OSM, I just don't want > people to think it's as well maintained and reliable as some other types of > government data. > > -Kevin (Kevo) > > > On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 20:39, James <[email protected]> wrote: > > funny you should mention geocoder.ca > > The owner of that website was sued by Canada Post because he was crowd > sourcing postal codes. Just recently (2 ish years ago?) they dropped the > lawsuit because they knew they didnt have a case(He came to the Ottawa > meetups a couple of times) > > On Wed., Oct. 2, 2019, 8:08 p.m. Jarek Piórkowski, <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Yeah, Canada Post currently considers postal codes their commercial > data. Crowd-sourcing all or a substantial amount of full codes seems > infeasible. Crowd-sourcing the forward sortation areas (the first A1A) > seems difficult since verifiability is going to be a problem > especially around the edges of the areas. > > The website OpenStreetMap.org returns results for some postal codes > from a third-party database https://geocoder.ca/?terms=1 which is not > ODbL-compatible either. > > Partial mapping is causing some problems with tools like Nominatim > that attach the nearest tagged postcode to search results, often > resulting in improper postal codes for reverse address lookups, > however that is arguably a tooling problem and not an OSM problem per > se. > > This isn't going to be pretty until Canada Post is persuaded to free > the data. Call your MP, everybody. > > --Jarek > > On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 17:38, john whelan <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > " The number one request on open.canada.ca is to open the postal code > database. Feel free to add your vote. > https://open.canada.ca/en/suggested-datasets"; > > > > Cheerio John > > > > On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 13:32, john whelan <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> On the import mailing list there is a proposal to import postcodes in > the UK one of the reasons given was that many like to input a postcode to > get directions on smartphones using things like OSMand. > >> > >> I don't think an Open Data source with the correct licensing is > available in Canada but OSMand appears to be able to use the postcode if it > is entered in the map as part of the address. Is there any Open Data that > might be useful? > >> > >> I don't know if it is possible but could something be used to extract > postcodes in the current map and from there perhaps we could come up with a > list of missing postcodes that need one address with it in mapped? > >> > >> As a minimum if you could add a few in you know from local knowledge > that might help fill in some gaps. > >> > >> Thoughts > >> > >> Thanks John > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Talk-ca mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-ca mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-ca mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca > > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-ca mailing > [email protected]https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca > > > -- > Sent from Postbox <https://www.postbox-inc.com> > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-ca mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca >
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