Please could someone clarify the correct naming convention for street names that include north, south, east & west in their title, such as the following:
“Broad Street West”. This is the actual name of the street and is confirmed by GSV.
It is not clear from the UK roads wiki how to abbreviate for street names that include directions.
I had changed it to “Broad St West” but WME Validator didn’t like that. I’m not sure I should be changing it to “Broad St (W)” like the wiki describes as that seems to indicate the direction of travel and suggests the road is merely called Broad St and happens to run in a westerly direction.
As “West” is part of the actual road name and not just a suffix added to indicate direction of travel, it should be written in full as it doesn’t appear in the list of abbreviations permitted in a road name. It wouldn’t surprise me if Validator simply hasn’t been written to cope with names of this format, and is assuming that any direction at the end of the name is a suffix.
Edit to add:
The abbreviations list only applies to those words when they’re being used to denote whether the road is a “Road”, “Avenue” etc, and shouldn’t be used if those words appear elsewhere in the road name.
e.g. Village Green would be abbreviated to Village Gn, but Green Lane wouldn’t be abbreviated to Gn Ln…
I’ve seen many roads mapped with directions being abbreviated, in this case it would read Broad St W. The brackets are only added when the direction of travel is being given, in a perfect world (N) would be read as Northbound, etc.
You can check how Waze reads a name by going into the edit name field and clicking on the speaker icon.
I know the roads wiki page needs updating, maybe the directions abbreviation can be added, note to self.
Great question - the wiki page doesn’t really cover this and a quick search in Waze indicates an inconsistency of use so looks like an area we should set some guidance on.
Here’s a example where sections of the same road are named ‘North High St’ and ‘N High St’ in Musselburgh
My opinion is there are some road names that we should abbreviate and some we should not. I would categorise them this way:
If the direction is a key part of the road name then it should not be abbreviated:
“North Street” is mapped as “North St” * “East Street” is mapped as “East St”
If the cardinal qualifies an existing (or previously existing) road name then it should be abbreviated.
“High Street East” is mapped as “High St E” * “Broad Street West” is mapped as “Broad St W”
The point for me is that in the second category it is likely that there is another section of road with the same name and a different cardinal or no cardinal. In your example “Broad Street West” is separate from “Broad Street” and that probably came about when the Parkway junction was built.
As for my example from Musselburgh, that therefore should be “N High St” and it is distinct from “High St” which continues on the south side of the river. Having said that, I accept that “North High St” may be more aesthetic so perhaps there should be an exception if the cardinal is at the beginning of the name.
Open for thoughts and then we can put something on the wiki page.
PS Yes - you are right to discount bracketed cardinals - they should only be used for split roads to indicate the direction of each carriageway along with (CW) and (ACW) for orbital roads.
That’ll teach me to reply with a brain still fogged by the after-effects of a lengthy illness :oops:
Having now reviewed how the abbreviation code works in WMEOD, abbreviating “North/South/East/West” to just “N/S/E/W” if it appears at the end of the road name is the preferred way to do names, just as my namesake above suggests.
I’d be happier for the cardinal to be abbreviated only when it’s at the end of the name, otherwise it risks people incorrectly abbreviating non-cardinal uses of North/South/East/West, and would also make it considerably harder to automate road name editing/validation.
