There’s some vagueness on how the autocomplete works as it seems autocomplete is not populated via the waze database, only if you do a full search do things work as expected. I’ve added the general topic to the upcoming webinar q/a list and maybe will get a little bit more clarity.
I’m curious how auto-complete works as well. So many times I’m keying in an address and I’ll see multiple entries for what I am guessing is the same place. Why so many? Is it because other Wazers, not editors, have created a place with a slightly different name? Has an editor created a place with a slightly different name? Have other app users Searched for a place with an incorrect name?
When I do an app Search for 99, I get three different entries for Marlborough.
999 Boston Post Road, Marlborough
99 Boston Post Rd W, Marlborough
999 Boston Post Road East, Marlborough
And then I get 99 Restaurant, Washington St, Hudson; 99 Restaurant & Pub, SW Cutoff, Worcester.
Following up on this thread, any further thoughts on duel city naming and the Boylston St test?
IMHO I like the separate communities. Helps with the same street names in the Boston area
Thanks for all of the comments and discussion.
The app autocomplete is still a bit of a mystery, but the use of neighborhood appears to work well enough. If you explicitly search for an address in Jamaica Plain, you get the right location. (Though the app still doesn’t show “Jamaica Plain” in the address when you tap on the search result - it’s labeled “Boston”. Oh well.)
With that and the discussion in mind, here’s the revised proposal:
The current MA standard for city/town names on street segments is to use one of the 351 official names as primary for streets. While this works well in most cases, there are situations (notably Boston’s neighborhoods and the Cape’s villages) where strict adherence to this rule can cause routing problems, and we have deviated from the rule in the past (particularly on the Cape).
To address this issue, the following change is proposed for street segments only (does not apply to Places):
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Use official name as primary, unless:
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There is a well-established village/neighborhood/CDP name, that is more commonly used (and has been cleared with SMs and listed in the MA wazeo as accepted). This can be used as the primary, with official name as alternate. Use USPS Zip Code boundaries to determine the extent of neighborhoods/villages. (The WME US Government Boundaries script is useful for this purpose.)
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There is duplication in street name / address between villages (e.g. Harwichport/West Harwich) or a neighborhood vs. city (think Dorchester/Boston), leading to routing issues which could be solved by using village/neighborhood name as primary. Again, clearance by SM required.
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Any other oddball cases. Discussion, agreement, and publishing on the MA wazeo required.
We won’t start a program of re-labeling streets, but will update segments as needed to solve routing issues. It’s probably preferable to do the entire extent of a named street, rather than an individual segment, though. Some consideration needs to be given to avoiding islands in the city layer as well.
mudge42
I like that summary Mudge. Thanks!
I clearly need to be paying closer attention to this forum!
I like mudge’s proposal for the most part; only quibble I have is that CDPs should not be used at all for reference in New England, since those are arbitrarily determined by the Census Bureau and change every 10 years based on population. I also think #2 will automatically solve #3, since ZIP codes already account for duplicate street names.
Only thing to be careful of is the type of ZIP code you map, as you can have Standard, PO Box, Unique and Military. In Rhode Island, we chose to only go by Standard ZIP codes, as those represented actual physical addresses, rather than just a little post office in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any place on the USPS site that tells you what type each ZIP code is, so I’ve been relying on sites like https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org to indicate the type. I realize it’s not “official” data, but it’s the best we can do at this point.
I have made a minor edit to the Massachusetts wazeo page referencing this discussion as well as a tracking page that the state managers can access.
Remember that the proposed changes are for specific problematic streets, not for entire neighborhoods (at least for now).
Please contact a MA SM if a change is needed so that we can keep track of these exceptions.
For the purpose of documentation. Recently it was discovered one of the duplicate address in Boston is 800 Washington Street Boston, MA
The two locations here and here
A Place point with a name of 800 Washington St was created to help with navigating to Tufts Medical Center, since that is a more significant place than the one located in Dorchester. The Dorchester location has the House Number of 800 assigned to the segment.
This represents the challenge of Boston Neighborhoods. While this is not an ideal solution they are both technically Washington St, and google maps seams to default you here
Glad you came up with a solution. Hope it works as expected. Thanks for working on the 800 Washington St for me.
Sean
Palmer MA:
The town has four unincorporated villages. While there is one police department for the town … each village has its own fire and water departments … and its own Post Office.
Each village has its own Main St. There are many other street names in town that are duplicated in the villages. Most of these streets are NOT contiguous, e.g., they do not cross from one village to another. And - the house number ranges on these streets overlap.
The villages are Three Rivers, Thorndike, Bondsville and Depot Village. Depot Village is the oddity - normally it is just called Palmer (Palmer should probably be the primary with Depot Village the alt).
This is where the ZIP codes come in handy, as each of those villages has their own ZIP code, so you can use those to set the village boundaries (with the village name as primary and Palmer as the alt name):
Three Rivers (01080)
Thorndike (01079)
Bondsville (01009)
Can’t seem to find any references to Depot Village in USPS records, so I would argue that it shouldn’t be mapped at all, and the rest of the municipality can just have Palmer as the city name.
Seams quite arbitrary on when these are utilized or not, part of Massachusetts accepts them on Cape Cod but not in Boston?
@GooberKing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_(CDP),_Massachusetts
The Palmer MA zip code is 01069 - and Depot Village is NOT a valid town name. But: all the street signs in that part of Palmer show:
depot village
MAIN STREET
town of Palmer
(sorry - don’t know how to post an in-line image in this bbs system)
Many people will refer to locations in this section of town as Depot Village - probably because it is less ambiguous than saying Palmer … which could be in any of the four villages.
Yea, it’s a tough call because you want to respect what locals actually identify with, but you need some concrete means to determine where that boundary ends in order to map it properly. In the case of Depot Village, it sounds kinda similar to one of our villages in RI (Wickford) that’s not covered by the ZIP code approach, but yet everyone calls that area by its colloquial name. Still, I think that only really refers to the business district (as all the shops want to play up the Wickford Village identity), but I doubt many locals actually consider themselves residents of Wickford (since all their mail says North Kingstown). Does that sound about right for Depot Village?
Sure does - in the <cough cough> village proper there are all the upscale street signs with the village name … elsewhere reverts back to the standard signs.
I’d like permission to add an alt city of Charleston on this segment https://www.waze.com/en-US/editor?env=usa&lon=-71.07806&lat=42.38453&zoom=7&segments=22960044 as the lofts here have their address as Charleston http://prntscr.com/oeljhc. By not having the alt city, we’re letting Google have full control over the users selection of that address. Thank you for the consideration. https://www.waze.com/en-US/editor?env=usa&lon=-71.07806&lat=42.38453&zoom=7&venues=189333928.1893470350.6728095
I saw that you had already converted a PP for that address to a RPP. It didn’t have an address so I added the 30 Caldwell, Charlestown as the address. At the present we are not renaming streets unless there is a duplicate name elsewhere in Boston.
Caldwell St. is unique throughout Boston so routing will not be affected at all. While I don’t see any harm in adding an alt city name, it also won’t do anything either as there’s no other street that confounds searches.
The CharlesTOWN name for the apartment is not coming from Google - it appears to be Zip Code related. A search on the USPS site for that address returns a 02129 zip which is Charlestown technically.
Strange that it didn’t have an address. It did earlier today. Thanks for taking care of it.
Sean
@SanzClew I was going by this wiki article https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/USA/House_Numbers_in_WME#Address_search_hierarchy that states “Waze RPP (with house number, street name, city name, and entry/exit point) if there is the listed city name as a primary or alternate city name on a nearby segment.”
We don’t have that there, so the RPP is not being used.