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We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk

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Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#121

Post by creesch »

NeoTar wrote: post #48

Some context, for people not located in the UK - A full British postcode typically aims to cover around 15 buildings (sometime a single building, sometimes a street of 50 houses). This is in contrast to many other postal code systems which cover relatively broad areas). Or to put it another way - UK - 2,643,732 codes, 1 code per 25 people, USA - 41,700 codes, 1 code per 8000 people, Germany - 8,200 codes, 1 code per…

Dutch post codes actually do specify the street.

It's four digits and two letters. The digits cover an area (can be a city, town, neighborhood) and the letters cover the specific street or part of the street. Technically, they cover a range of house numbers, which in 99.9% of the cases is (part of) a street.

So just like in the UK a postcode is enough to get you pretty close. A postcode and house number will get you to the front door.

To get back to the article. I always feel like the UK manages to take privatization of public services to a next ridiculous level. This being a good example.

Another one is the rail network where the company that owns all the infrastructure and is responsible for maintenance (Railtrack) was fully privatized and even stock listed. This of course did not go very well in as far as actually properly maintaining the network. Resulting in it being nationalized again where now Network Rail is responsible.

In the Netherlands the company that owns all rail infrastructure and is responsible for it (ProRail) is a private company but with just the government as a shareholder. Meaning it is still effectively a public company, so things did result in such dire conditions as the UK.

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#122

Post by xnorswap »

_trampeltier wrote: post #114
xnorswap wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drop a pin in google maps it shows you the lat/lon, e.g. 51.5010392, -0.1423616 7 decimal places of lat/lon is approximately a centimetre.

Centimetre, and after the next big earthquake are all numbers off, sometimes even by several meters. Now what you do? New addresses for all, or wrong numbers to new buildings?

This was in the context of needing to give a location for an ambulance, not for addressing things.

It's an ephemeral location for an ephemeral need.

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#123

Post by dmurray »

wiredfool wrote: post #59
mrweasel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The British mail addresses are pretty interesting. We quickly learned that, as you say some postcode have just one or two houses, which may not have numbers, but names. I'm sure there is a "falsehoods programmers believe about addresses" somewhere.

Ireland can have: Foo House Townland Large town somewhat nearby where the mail comes through but only tangentially near the actual house County Bar Where Townland is optional. There's a bank address in my town: PTSB Kennedy Road Navan Co Meath Kennedy Road is about 2 blocks long with ~ 30 shop fronts, and there are numbers on all but one of them.

> Where Townland is optional.

Not really optional in most cases if you're not actually in the "large town somewhat nearby". I would say the large town part is more optional.

You're not going to get post delivered to "Lakeview, Cavan, Co Cavan", but you should be ok with "Lakeview, Killeshandra, Co Cavan".

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#125

Post by moring »

darrenf wrote: post #47
agolio wrote: post #34

I am a bit surprised by how hard this article makes out the problem to be. Crowdsourcing should make short work of the problem, with the right incentives, which the government will be able to offer. Additionally private map providers (e.g. Google, Apple) must surely have this data (since they are able to route navigation to private addresses). Why not just negotiate with them?

How would crowdsourcing solve this problem? > Oh, and it wouldn’t even be legally allowed to include, er, postcodes, as they are specifically owned by Royal Mail

How does OpenStreetMap solve it? OSM, more specifically OSM Nominatim, shows postcodes. Example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?lat=53.151778&lon=-1.16...

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#126

Post by HPsquared »

mjlee wrote: post #98
xnorswap wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drop a pin in google maps it shows you the lat/lon, e.g. 51.5010392, -0.1423616 7 decimal places of lat/lon is approximately a centimetre.

To save some maths during a crisis - 3 is ~100m, 4 is ~10m.

Lat/long coordinates and metres are actually linked quite closely: the metre was originally defined as "the arc from equator to North pole is defined as 10,000 km". That is, 90 degrees is 10,000 km.

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#127

Post by krisoft »

_trampeltier wrote: post #114
xnorswap wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drop a pin in google maps it shows you the lat/lon, e.g. 51.5010392, -0.1423616 7 decimal places of lat/lon is approximately a centimetre.

Centimetre, and after the next big earthquake are all numbers off, sometimes even by several meters. Now what you do? New addresses for all, or wrong numbers to new buildings?

> Now what you do?

When the ambulance arrives wave your hands and say "over here!". So they can do the "last several meters" of navigation by homing on your visual presence.

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#128

Post by 8A51C »

normangray wrote: post #103
ascorbic wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Additionally private map providers (e.g. Google, Apple) must surely have this data (since they are able to route navigation to private addresses). Why not just negotiate with them? They licence it from Royal Mail

Probably, but not necessarily. The article points out that the PAF is kept up to date by virtue of thousands of postmen and postwomen physically visiting the rows in the database on a daily basis, as part of normal business, and logging updates. That level of routine maintenance is what any non-PostOffice PAF alternative would have to also do. Amazon, and probably Google Maps, are two of the very small number of orga…

I was a postie for a short while. A particular row of houses had no number 63, 61 and 65 were next door to each other. I always wondered if I posted something to 63 would it land in my sorting rack? Sadly I never tried, but I am fairly sure it would have. I often observed manual intervention to resolve addresses, from years of collective postie knowledge.

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#130

Post by NeoTar »

yardstick wrote: post #100
NeoTar wrote: post #48

Some context, for people not located in the UK - A full British postcode typically aims to cover around 15 buildings (sometime a single building, sometimes a street of 50 houses). This is in contrast to many other postal code systems which cover relatively broad areas). Or to put it another way - UK - 2,643,732 codes, 1 code per 25 people, USA - 41,700 codes, 1 code per 8000 people, Germany - 8,200 codes, 1 code per…

> sometime a single building Fun fact- some postcodes cover only a fraction of a building. There’s buildings where 3 postcodes are used. Same street number, same main entrance, but different post codes. Edit: A 2-postcode building example is “M3 7GW” and “M3 7GX”, both go to 55 Queen St, Salford.

Apparently the worst case in the opposite direction is the University of Warwick, where a single postcode (CV4 7AL) covers 5000 individual residences (so probably about 5000 people given these are likely to all be student rooms, and sharing a room is uncommon in the UK).
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