Today I just got offered a job interview at 1170 Douglas Avenue in Altamonte. FL. I arrived at the location 20 minuets early to be prompt and within that 20 minuets I had the hardest time finding the place. The address numbers were visible clearly, but the even number side of the street went from 1110 to 1190. To top things off 1110 is the last building on Douglas Avenue as it turns into Markum Woods Road where 1180 appears after the road name change. Then you have a series of buildings in back of 1180 that range from all points in between. So basically there is no sequence of numerals from 1110 to 1180.
I was always wondering how businesses and residences are numbered? I know that lot numbers have to do with the break in sequence which is why lets say 24 Main Street is not next door to 25 Main Street, but it could be 29 Main or maybe 30 or 31 even. However, I could never understand why some businesses that are not on the street proper are allowed to use that particular street as a proper address.
Also, I even noticed that in Florida many businesses use the side or back streets for its location. In Hunters Creek, FL you have Leslies Pool Supply on John Young Parkway, yet Town Center Boulevard is its mailing address despite the front of all stores in its strip mall face John Young with the side of the shopping center being Town Center Boulevard. Then you have the Church I worship at which is on John Young Parkway as well, but Marsfield Avenue is its address with Marsfield being a side street off of a side street. Deerfield Boulevard is the side street of John Young where my Church is located, but not even that street is being used as Marsfield is located behind the church that is another side to Deerfield.
Then 9 miles north of here you have the great Orlando Baptist Church that preceded John Young Parkway that uses John Young Parkway as its proper address. That building is located technically on Bruton Boulevard or even LB McLeod Road and was using one of them long before the City of Orlando constructed JYP. How and why the city allowed a proper business (although it is a church I say that because its not a residence) to change its street address is beyond me as well.
Personally I like Chicago's street grid the best as there is no question to where a certain building or resident number is located as it is standard, and if all were this way you would not have issues where buildings are out of sequence.
24 would be opposite of 25 in a standard number scheme, no? odds on one side, evens on the other, seems to be very universal, even as other things are nonstandard.
Although, sometimes 1000 feet will increase the house number about 100 and sometimes 1000.
Quote from: 1 on September 24, 2013, 02:59:49 PM
Although, sometimes 1000 feet will increase the house number about 100 and sometimes 1000.
Funny how it varies by jurisdiction. In my part of the Midwest, where the township-and-range system exists, I most often see 1000 for each mile... but there's also 800 per mile and even 200 per mile (Allegan County, MI).
Also frustrating is when a city or village doesn't use the county's numbering system, especially when the numbers
almost line up but not quite. Heck, Barry County's 0, 0 point is located in almost the center of Hastings... but Hastings uses a different numbering scheme!
Quote from: roadman65 on September 24, 2013, 02:54:43 PM
I was always wondering how businesses and residences are numbered? I know that lot numbers have to do with the break in sequence which is why lets say 24 Main Street is not next door to 25 Main Street, but it could be 29 Main or maybe 30 or 31 even. However, I could never understand why some businesses that are not on the street proper are allowed to use that particular street as a proper address.
In most US states, generally a central street (often "Main Street" in smaller towns) or geographic feature is utilized as a baseline, and buildings along a street are numbered based on the distance from that centerline, usually measured by blocks. So for instance, to use a local example, 2300 Florida Street in Baton Rouge is 23 blocks east of the addressing baseline for east-west streets (Mississippi River). The length of a standard block varies by jurisdiction. In most cities or counties, 100 is the lowest number assignable, but some cities use one and two digit addresses in places (sometimes as vanity addresses)
Another method, used in the UK, much of continental Europe, New England states, and (for some likely ridiculous reason) Lafayette, Louisiana, is to pick one end of the street and number upward from there, regardless of where the street lies within the urban area. This type of addressing generally counts upward at "1" but Lafayette starts its address sequences at "100." This appears to be more common in cities which are not laid out according to a grid system or some regularized layout of streets.
Generally a rule of addressing is followed where evens and odds follow opposite sides of the street.
Of course there are always variations and oddball addresses within any system that were assigned improperly or using older techniques, but end up grandfathered in since they have been in use for many years; and changing the address would entail having to alter records with the post office, utility companies, city/county/parish/state government, etc. etc. which is a lot of hassle, meaning it's easier to just keep the oddball addresses and make note of them when necessary.
Quote from: getemngo on September 24, 2013, 06:08:35 PM
Quote from: 1 on September 24, 2013, 02:59:49 PM
Although, sometimes 1000 feet will increase the house number about 100 and sometimes 1000.
Funny how it varies by jurisdiction. In my part of the Midwest, where the township-and-range system exists, I most often see 1000 for each mile... but there's also 800 per mile and even 200 per mile (Allegan County, MI).
Quote from: getemngo on September 24, 2013, 06:08:35 PM
Quote from: 1 on September 24, 2013, 02:59:49 PM
Although, sometimes 1000 feet will increase the house number about 100 and sometimes 1000.
Funny how it varies by jurisdiction. In my part of the Midwest, where the township-and-range system exists, I most often see 1000 for each mile... but there's also 800 per mile and even 200 per mile (Allegan County, MI).
Can even differ by direction and distance from downtown.
In Milwaukee, it is 800/mile north-south and 1600/mile east-west.
In Green Bay, it is 100/block in the inner city, then moves at a much slower pace outside that.
I read somewhere that in suburban areas it often has something to do with the distance from emergency services and that this explains why so many streets in one neighborhood will have identical house numbers (in my neighborhood, at least five streets all use numbers in the 6600s).
I actually assign addresses for a living.
We do rural addresses in the following ways-
1. State/US highways are assigned based on their milepoint with 1000 addresses per mile, so if your address is 144412 US HIGHWAY 12, you live at milepost 144.412 on US 12.
2. County roads are assigned with 1000 address numbers per mile from their origin. The origin is either a US/State highway if they originate at one of those, or failing that it's the place the side closest to the county seat. So if you live at 123 Whatever Creek Rd, you're .123 miles down Whatever Creek Rd from the road's origin.
3. Two or more addressable structures that share a driveway over 1000 feet long are assigned off a unique road name.
Our numbers start at 0. Missoula County starts at 100 and has 1500 addressable structures per mile, but otherwise does it the same. This is more confusing, in my opinion, because you can't set your trip odometer to find a house, which is really useful in rural areas.
Our communities have 30 address numbers per block from a common grid beginning at a 0-0 point in the middle of town.
The state of Wyoming uses a 100-100 system, so address numbers radiate out from a 100-100 point.
Boise goes grid based even off grid, which some places do. Your address number could be at a corner in a subdivision but be 650 or something, because if you drew a line straight south you'd be halfway between 6th and 7th streets where there actually is a grid. That's...helpful I guess.
Distance based addresses are good where there's no grid as opposed to super-imposing a grid, because if you can find the road, you can set your odometer and find the location.
If you have a grid, a grid based address is probably the easiest for emergency services to find.
Interestingly, most E911 dispatch softwares by default dispatch based on address relative to road, which makes accurate addressing important. If a call comes in from 550 Ferguson St, the dispatch software will go to wherever 550 should be on the road line based on what percentage down the address range it is (so it finds road line labelled FERGUSON in the 500-600 range and plots a point in the middle). There are programs available to dispatch based on structure point (so when the call comes in it looks for the point at 550 Ferguson St), but that's a bit more complicated because it requires dispatch to be updated constantly with regards to new construction, and a good number of 911 calls come from new construction.
What that means is that assigned addresses have to be really accurate to work properly- in an urban area that's important because if you have a lot of structures and people aren't so great at posting their addresses, you need to know exactly where you're going, so the plotted point on the map needs to plot to exactly the correct point on the line or your responders could get lost. In an rural area where somebody may own 100 acres and shift their driveway significantly, they're often surprised (and disgruntled) to learn they need a new address because of that, but you don't want the fire truck to have to hunt for the driveway.
QuoteOf course there are always variations and oddball addresses within any system that were assigned improperly or using older techniques, but end up grandfathered in since they have been in use for many years; and changing the address would entail having to alter records with the post office, utility companies, city/county/parish/state government, etc. etc. which is a lot of hassle, meaning it's easier to just keep the oddball addresses and make note of them when necessary.
NENA Standards call for addresses to be assigned to structures, not parcels, and that's something that throws a lot of people. Your structure address may be different than your legal parcel address, which sometimes causes problems with financing- I have to write a letter or two a week to mortgage companies clarifying legal addresses. In that case we change the legal parcel address to the structure address.
That said, if I need to change somebody's address, I contact the post office and utility companies as well as the requisite governments. You still need to update personal information, but as far as mail/billing addresses/etc, I take care of that. I also work directly with the post office and utility companies to make sure no "rogue" addresses are coming through- if an address is assigned that nobody has ever heard of, they contact me to make sure it's a legitimate address.
As Big John reported for Milwaukee, Minneapolis is also 800 per mile north-south (i.e., eight blocks per mile). Block numbers corresponded to numbered Avenues (e.g., my house was 4630, between 46th and 47th). East-west blocks were half the length of the N-S blocks and at least in the suburb just north of NE Minneapolis I lived in, the numbering seemed to be more or less continuous. Since almost all houses had addresses on the N-S streets, this didn't break the pattern much. I haven't evaluated other quadrants of the city to see if this is a consistent pattern. OTOH, in St. Paul the numbering is continuous, not breaking to the next 100 at an intersecting street.
My parents lived on the edge of Prescott, Arizona. As their street was developed, it appears some houses were assigned numbers that didn't allow for intervening lots to be developed. Thus, in a couple of locations, the numbers regressed.
Quote from: The High Plains Traveler on September 24, 2013, 11:52:32 PMThus, in a couple of locations, the numbers regressed.
Yeah, I'm supposed to ensure that address numbers are very, very precise even if it means changing people's addresses because that's an address coordinator's nightmare. That's another benefit to distance based addressing too- with 1000 address numbers a mile, you get a unique address every 10 feet. With a fixed grid and the possibility of densification, things can get ugly.
Quote from: roadman65 on September 24, 2013, 02:54:43 PM
Today I just got offered a job interview at 1170 Douglas Avenue in Altamonte. FL. I arrived at the location 20 minuets early to be prompt and within that 20 minuets I had the hardest time finding the place. The address numbers were visible clearly, but the even number side of the street went from 1110 to 1190. To top things off 1110 is the last building on Douglas Avenue as it turns into Markum Woods Road where 1180 appears after the road name change. Then you have a series of buildings in back of 1180 that range from all points in between. So basically there is no sequence of numerals from 1110 to 1180.
I was always wondering how businesses and residences are numbered? I know that lot numbers have to do with the break in sequence which is why lets say 24 Main Street is not next door to 25 Main Street, but it could be 29 Main or maybe 30 or 31 even. However, I could never understand why some businesses that are not on the street proper are allowed to use that particular street as a proper address.
Also, I even noticed that in Florida many businesses use the side or back streets for its location. In Hunters Creek, FL you have Leslies Pool Supply on John Young Parkway, yet Town Center Boulevard is its mailing address despite the front of all stores in its strip mall face John Young with the side of the shopping center being Town Center Boulevard. Then you have the Church I worship at which is on John Young Parkway as well, but Marsfield Avenue is its address with Marsfield being a side street off of a side street. Deerfield Boulevard is the side street of John Young where my Church is located, but not even that street is being used as Marsfield is located behind the church that is another side to Deerfield.
Then 9 miles north of here you have the great Orlando Baptist Church that preceded John Young Parkway that uses John Young Parkway as its proper address. That building is located technically on Bruton Boulevard or even LB McLeod Road and was using one of them long before the City of Orlando constructed JYP. How and why the city allowed a proper business (although it is a church I say that because its not a residence) to change its street address is beyond me as well.
Personally I like Chicago's street grid the best as there is no question to where a certain building or resident number is located as it is standard, and if all were this way you would not have issues where buildings are out of sequence.
Suburban corporate park nonsense like this is one of the biggest reasons I travel with a GPS.
In the neighborhood I grew up in, the houses were originally in sequence, by letter (example: 230-A, 230-B, 230-C, almost as if they were apartments addresses, but otherwise just a normal suburban neighborhood). With 911, they were reassigned numbers, but not in perfect sequence (11, 15, 19, 25, 33, 37). Houses same distance apart from each other, with no possibility of squeezing an additional house between two existing houses.
My current neighborhood has the same odd, not perfect sequence.
A friend of mine lives on a street...1st house: 1301. His house. 1301 1/2. Next house 1303, 1305, etc. Again, houses same distance apart. How that happened, I haven't a clue.
Right now the county I work for is on a kick that each street in a new subdivision should have its own set of hundred blocks. That is, Alpha Drive would be 100s, while Beta Road would be 200s and 300s. Some towns (incorporated or unincorporated) have their own grids, or at least an origin point, but their outer developments don't always stick to them. Two counties over, a road starts with a number based on its state grid position (the last five digits in feet) and then progresses at a rate of 100 address numbers per 1000 feet.
And then you have municipalities that change their addressing system as in the case of Plainfield, Illinois.
Plainfield used to have their own addressing system based on a point in the Village. In the early 2000s, the Village then changed addressing systems to that used by unincorporated Will County, based on State and Madison in Chicago's Loop. The addresses went from one, two, and three digits to five digits and only south or west, no north or east.
This makes a very easy way to tell if one is in Plainfield or Joliet due to the USPS which assigned "Plainfield" mailing addresses to most things in Plainfield Township west of I-55. If the house or business has five digits, it's Plainfield. If it has four digits, it's actually in Joliet, even if the USPS doesn't think so. Joliet has their own grid based off Chicago and Washington in downtown Joliet, and uses a system of 800 to the mile (same as the Chicago system). Incidentally, the Joliet system nests into the Chicago system as Chicago and Washington (Jefferson to the west) are section line roads, the same section line roads the Chicago system uses. Hence, Washington and Jefferson are 199th Street, and Chicago is 192nd Avenue using the City of Chicago grid.
Quote from: getemngo on September 24, 2013, 06:08:35 PMAlso frustrating is when a city or village doesn't use the county's numbering system, especially when the numbers almost line up but not quite. Heck, Barry County's 0, 0 point is located in almost the center of Hastings... but Hastings uses a different numbering scheme!
In Montgomery County, MD, the unincorporated areas and most of the smaller municipalities (i.e., most of the county) base their numbering system roughly on DC's, which is roughly a Cartesian grid with its origin at the Capitol. It thus makes sense that in the subdivision where I grew up, numbers began with 4800 on east-west streets and 10900 on north-south streets.
The City of Rockville has to be different, however. That is why the numbering system on Rockville Pike abruptly changes (IIRC, from 12200 and increasing to 1900 and decreasing as you drive north) and why some streets have different numbering systems on the opposite sides of the street.
Pretty much all of New England (and to a lesser degree New York and some of the other eastern states), addresses start with 1 or a one-digit number at one end of town (or street), and progress to the other end of town (or street), usually in intervals of 2 or 4 (unless there is a wide gap between houses). So it is very rare to see addresses higher than 1000 unless it is a main road, and some towns have no roads that go above 500 or so. I know Main Street in Hartford goes into the 3600s and Washington St in Boston goes to about 5400 or 5500, but those are about the highest numbers you will see.
There are some towns that have cardinal directions (north, south, etc), but usually on the main streets only.
In my county, we use addresses based on mileage. State roads are named for the road numbers and their direction from the county seat (Hwy. 52 West, Hwy 11 South, Hwy. 498, etc.)
Because a section of my state highway was relocated in the county seat a few years ago, our address numbers changed. The change in mileage on the section was sufficient enough for the local 911 agency felt it was necessary even though the state didn't change the official milepointing on the route. My home address changed from 5634 to 5504, indicating that my driveway is now 0.130 miles closer to town.
Addresses are meant for directing mail to the correct recipient mailbox. They're not supposed to be a general purpose means of identifying a location, though it has become common to use them as such. Society has failed to bring into common usage better methods for identifying physical locations or parcels of land.
Quote from: vtk on September 25, 2013, 07:45:11 PM
Addresses are meant for directing mail to the correct recipient. They're not supposed to be a general purpose means of identifying a location, though it has become common to use them as such.
I am not sure if I see the distinction. in order to direct mail, some guy in a mail truck needs to know exactly where to go with his packet of mail. how is that different than a person needing to know where to go with whatever business they have?
QuoteSociety has failed to bring into common usage better methods for identifying physical locations or parcels of land.
what would you propose?
Quote from: vtk on September 25, 2013, 07:45:11 PM
Addresses are meant for directing mail to the correct recipient. They're not supposed to be a general purpose means of identifying a location, though it has become common to use them as such. Society has failed to bring into common usage better methods for identifying physical locations or parcels of land.
That...I don't know about that. Before we had addresses, legal descriptions were used to identify parcels of land, and it's a hell of a lot easier to send a fire truck to 812 Birch St than RAMSWOOD ADDITION C.O.S. #143 LOT 2 BLOCK T LESS THE PORTION DESCRIBED BY SURVEY #1123B.
Your assessor and title company probably still uses legal descriptions and/or some sort of parcel identification code that has the legal description attributed to it, but for practical purposes addresses are the way to go.
Now, as I said upthread, it's also been a limitation of dispatch softwares (to save space and speed things up) to identify locations along a geo-referenced line instead of having rows in the database for each individual structure point- the local computer can store a geodatabase with 5000 line records instead of 50000 structure records. Before that, we had paper maps, and distance/grid based addresses are way easier to index to a map than other means of identifying a parcel. That's changing slowly, but given what we've been limited to by technology in the last several years, addresses are the way to go.
Now that computing power is easier to get to, maybe we get to a point where we don't need addresses as much anymore, but they've by far been the best system for dispatching emergency services, and that's what addresses are made for.
As I said, I assign addresses for a living (among other things) under the umbrella of emergency response- I tell the post office what a valid address is, not the other way around. If somebody goes to the post office for an address, they get sent to me, and my job is to ensure that the address is valid for emergency services purposes, so that when you have a heart attack and can dial 911 but can't speak into the phone, the ambulance knows where to go. That's the root of addressing in this day and age, not mail.
QuotePlainfield used to have their own addressing system based on a point in the Village. In the early 2000s, the Village then changed addressing systems to that used by unincorporated Will County, based on State and Madison in Chicago's Loop. The addresses went from one, two, and three digits to five digits and only south or west, no north or east.
A lot of addresses around the country were changed in the early 2000s when E-911 was implemented, which allowed for computer-aided dispatch (i.e. when you call 911, the location automatically flashes on a map in the dispatch center/dispatched vehicles). That required a lot of address cleanup.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on September 25, 2013, 07:58:12 PM
Quote from: vtk on September 25, 2013, 07:45:11 PM
Addresses are meant for directing mail to the correct recipient. They're not supposed to be a general purpose means of identifying a location, though it has become common to use them as such.
I am not sure if I see the distinction. in order to direct mail, some guy in a mail truck needs to know exactly where to go with his packet of mail. how is that different than a person needing to know where to go with whatever business they have?
The mail carrier is expected to know all the quirks and oddities of mailbox locations on his route. A visitor is not expected to know such particulars.
Quote from: vtk on September 25, 2013, 08:05:34 PM
The mail carrier is expected to know all the quirks and oddities of mailbox locations on his route. A visitor is not expected to know such particulars.
I'm not sure if this is a flaw in the address number idea, as opposed to the implementation thereof.
if, as in the Prescott, AZ example, the numbers regress, that implies a lack of foresight by city planners.
Quote from: corco on September 25, 2013, 08:00:04 PM
That...I don't know about that. Before we had addresses, legal descriptions were used to identify parcels of land, and it's a hell of a lot easier to send a fire truck to 812 Birch St than RAMSWOOD ADDITION C.O.S. #143 LOT 2 BLOCK T LESS THE PORTION DESCRIBED BY SURVEY #1123B.
there are places which, until recently, had
postal addresses described in a manner halfway between the two. a friend of mine has a driver's license issued to him, by New Mexico first in 1991 and then reissued without update, that places his address at "SW CORNER [X] AND [Y]".
I mean, I don't know...if you don't think addresses are appropriate for emergency response, I'd really like to hear what a better idea is. For purposes of this exercise, you can only use technology that existed 20 years ago, since that's what existed when emergency response became address dependent.
The city of Stamford, CT assigns addresses by distance from the start of the road to the front door, assuming 25 foot wide lots. This means that for every 25 feet, the addresses increment up by 2 (odds on one side, evens on the other). If two buildings are within 25 feet, fractions are used. There is a house at 15 1/2 Something Street somewhere in town but I forget exactly where.
New York City is a mishmosh of various halfhearted attempts at coordination.
In the area of Manhattan below the gird, and Staten Island, a system similar to the one described for Stamford is used.
For avenues in Manhattan, the numbers count up by roughly 100 every 5 blocks (this correlates to 400 per mile), but the 0 point is just the southern end of the avenue. And of course, the avenues all have different southern endpoints.
For numbered streets in Manhattan, the numbers start at 0 at 5th Ave and increase by 100 with each avenue in each direction. But Lexington and Madison don't count as avenues for this purpose (since they were not in the original grid plan). And on the upper west side, the numbers start at 0 at Central Park West, not 300.
The Bronx more or less continues this scheme using Jerome Ave as the midpoint (since 5th Ave doesn't go there), but since the streets are not a nice grid things get messy, especially as you get further away from Jerome. North-south streets tie back to the southern end of the borough as a 0 point but again, it gets messy. Broadway, Park Ave, and Third Ave continue their numbers from Manhattan.
Queens excels at taking the concept of street numbering to its logical extreme, and while it can be confusing to newcomers (see the neighborhood (https://maps.google.com/?ll=40.715859,-73.903205&spn=0.004147,0.007725&t=m&z=17) that has 60th Street, 60th Place, 60th Lane, 60th Avenue, 60th Road, 60th Drive, and 60th Court all intersecting one another), the address system is at least near-perfectly predictable. All block numbers correspond to the number of the preceding cross street, with an individual number after a hyphen. So you know 76-22 109th Street will be directly south of 76th Avenue.
Brooklyn does a bunch of different things which in some cases compete or interfere with each other. In areas of the borough where streets are numbered, addresses generally correspond to those numbers: 8601 3rd Avenue will be at 86th Street, 1611 Avenue Y will be after E. 16th Street, and so on and so forth. But not always. The northern reaches of the numbered avenues do not follow this scheme - 4th Avenue, for example, increases by length up to 999 just north of 39th Street, where it then jumps to 3901 and goes by cross street from there on out. And for the lettered avenues which begin west of E. 1st Street, they increase by length until the cross streets catch up to the number, then go by cross street from there. In the areas of the borough where names rather than numbers rule supreme, the addresses just increase by length in the direction away from downtown. This means most east-west streets increase going east but in Red Hook they increase going west. Most north-south streets increase going south but in Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint, they increase going north. From the beginning of the street in each case, not from a consistent 0 point.
Quote from: corco on September 25, 2013, 08:55:18 PM
I mean, I don't know...if you don't think addresses are appropriate for emergency response, I'd really like to hear what a better idea is. For purposes of this exercise, you can only use technology that existed 20 years ago, since that's what existed when emergency response became address dependent.
A proper system for identifying locations or buildings rather than mailboxes would probably either be a 2D coordinate system of some kind (for places with a lot of very open space and/or a lack of named roads) or something that looks a lot like mailing addresses. But such a system should certainly not be guaranteed or even encouraged to match mailing addresses in all cases, and should have rules to prevent oddities that make it difficult for a visitor to find a specified location.
Actually, I think it would be really useful to have a geographic position shorthand (Lat/Lon or UTM-grid-based) which leaves off several most-significant digits, instead using a city name to disambiguate. Local city maps can be made available with this grid overlaid, and GPS navigation devices can be made to understand this system. Then, a business or your cousin or the guy who answered your Craigs List ad can inform you of their location in this system, and you can look it up on a map or enter it in your GPS to find them, without being subject to faulty geocoding services or having to walk up and down the block looking for an out-of-sequence mailbox number. Sadly, that's not been a popular strategy.
Quote from: corco on September 25, 2013, 08:00:04 PM
QuotePlainfield used to have their own addressing system based on a point in the Village. In the early 2000s, the Village then changed addressing systems to that used by unincorporated Will County, based on State and Madison in Chicago's Loop. The addresses went from one, two, and three digits to five digits and only south or west, no north or east.
A lot of addresses around the country were changed in the early 2000s when E-911 was implemented, which allowed for computer-aided dispatch (i.e. when you call 911, the location automatically flashes on a map in the dispatch center/dispatched vehicles). That required a lot of address cleanup.
However, the Plainfield address system change had nothing to do with E911. They switched systems from their own, perfectly valid system based on a grid off a point in downtown Plainfield to the Chicago-based system. I'm not exactly sure why the Village did it, but they were the only municipality do to so around here. Everyone else uses their own addressing system.
Many unincorporated areas around here were set up well anyway for E911 as they already used the grid based off State and Madison in the Loop. It only required a software change locally.
Quoteor something that looks a lot like mailing addresses. But such a system should certainly not be guaranteed or even encouraged to match mailing addresses in all cases
I guess that's where I get confused- why would you want to have two distinct locators when you can have one? Are you that concerned about privacy?
Why do you want to discourage visitors from finding locations? Remember there's two sides to that- there's people like you, who clearly don't want anybody knowing where they are, and then there's things like businesses, which want to be publically advertised and findable.
It's easy enough to hide though- become unlisted in the phone book and get a PO Box and that will prevent most from finding out where you live without making life less convenient for the majority of people who aren't afraid of visitors.
Quote from: corco on September 25, 2013, 10:36:36 PM
Quoteor something that looks a lot like mailing addresses. But such a system should certainly not be guaranteed or even encouraged to match mailing addresses in all cases
I guess that's where I get confused- why would you want to have two distinct locators when you can have one? Are you that concerned about privacy?
I am not that concerned about privacy, though I do recognize that's a side effect of the way I'd prefer we do things. If you want someone to email you, you give them one of your email addresses. If you want someone to call you or fax you, you give them one of your phone numbers. If you want someone to mail you a physical something, you give them your mailing address, which may or may not be a PO box. If you want someone to visit you, you tell them where you are (not where your mailbox is). This is logical, no? I understand that, because mailboxes generally don't move around, mailing addresses are often decent substitutes for location information. But as illustrated in the first post of this thread, that's not always the case.
Quote from: corco on September 24, 2013, 11:48:36 PM
I actually assign addresses for a living.
We do rural addresses in the following ways-
1. State/US highways are assigned based on their milepoint with 1000 addresses per mile, so if your address is 144412 US HIGHWAY 12, you live at milepost 144.412 on US 12.
2. County roads are assigned with 1000 address numbers per mile from their origin. The origin is either a US/State highway if they originate at one of those, or failing that it's the place the side closest to the county seat. So if you live at 123 Whatever Creek Rd, you're .123 miles down Whatever Creek Rd from the road's origin.
3. Two or more addressable structures that share a driveway over 1000 feet long are assigned off a unique road name.
Our numbers start at 0. Missoula County starts at 100 and has 1500 addressable structures per mile, but otherwise does it the same. This is more confusing, in my opinion, because you can't set your trip odometer to find a house, which is really useful in rural areas.
Our communities have 30 address numbers per block from a common grid beginning at a 0-0 point in the middle of town.
The state of Wyoming uses a 100-100 system, so address numbers radiate out from a 100-100 point.
Boise goes grid based even off grid, which some places do. Your address number could be at a corner in a subdivision but be 650 or something, because if you drew a line straight south you'd be halfway between 6th and 7th streets where there actually is a grid. That's...helpful I guess.
Distance based addresses are good where there's no grid as opposed to super-imposing a grid, because if you can find the road, you can set your odometer and find the location.
If you have a grid, a grid based address is probably the easiest for emergency services to find.
Interestingly, most E911 dispatch softwares by default dispatch based on address relative to road, which makes accurate addressing important. If a call comes in from 550 Ferguson St, the dispatch software will go to wherever 550 should be on the road line based on what percentage down the address range it is (so it finds road line labelled FERGUSON in the 500-600 range and plots a point in the middle). There are programs available to dispatch based on structure point (so when the call comes in it looks for the point at 550 Ferguson St), but that's a bit more complicated because it requires dispatch to be updated constantly with regards to new construction, and a good number of 911 calls come from new construction.
What that means is that assigned addresses have to be really accurate to work properly- in an urban area that's important because if you have a lot of structures and people aren't so great at posting their addresses, you need to know exactly where you're going, so the plotted point on the map needs to plot to exactly the correct point on the line or your responders could get lost. In an rural area where somebody may own 100 acres and shift their driveway significantly, they're often surprised (and disgruntled) to learn they need a new address because of that, but you don't want the fire truck to have to hunt for the driveway.
QuoteOf course there are always variations and oddball addresses within any system that were assigned improperly or using older techniques, but end up grandfathered in since they have been in use for many years; and changing the address would entail having to alter records with the post office, utility companies, city/county/parish/state government, etc. etc. which is a lot of hassle, meaning it's easier to just keep the oddball addresses and make note of them when necessary.
NENA Standards call for addresses to be assigned to structures, not parcels, and that's something that throws a lot of people. Your structure address may be different than your legal parcel address, which sometimes causes problems with financing- I have to write a letter or two a week to mortgage companies clarifying legal addresses. In that case we change the legal parcel address to the structure address.
That said, if I need to change somebody's address, I contact the post office and utility companies as well as the requisite governments. You still need to update personal information, but as far as mail/billing addresses/etc, I take care of that. I also work directly with the post office and utility companies to make sure no "rogue" addresses are coming through- if an address is assigned that nobody has ever heard of, they contact me to make sure it's a legitimate address.
How is it decided which side of the street will be even or odd addresses?
Is there a "regulation" that dictates which is even or odd, ie even are north side or odd is the south side?
Quote from: corco on September 25, 2013, 08:55:18 PM
I mean, I don't know...if you don't think addresses are appropriate for emergency response, I'd really like to hear what a better idea is. For purposes of this exercise, you can only use technology that existed 20 years ago, since that's what existed when emergency response became address dependent.
The town of Boone has recently begun a "crackdown" of sorts on buildings without clear address numbers because of emergency response concerns. Just sending notice to homeowners and landlords that they should put something up to avoid a fine. Mostly these are mountain homes, but sometimes it's older buildings closer to town.
QuoteHow is it decided which side of the street will be even or odd addresses?
It's stipulated in our addressing ordinance that the right side from the origin will be even and the left side will be odd. In the case of a cul-de-sac, addresses are assigned as if the right side of the cul-de-sac were the right side of the road and the left is on the left. For houses in the middle, the door location determines whether it's odd or even.
In a grid system, if your origin is in the middle of the road, typically your north and west sides of the street will have odd numbers.
Baltimore City is grid based, with Charles Street dividing the city between East and West and Baltimore Street dividing the city between north and south. For the downtown core and Charles Village the grid makes sense. Addresses on streets running north-south increase by 100 after each street (not alley) progressing higher as one travels further north as long as that street is north of Baltimore Street. This is evident with the numbered streets north of North Avenue (20th-42nd). Addresses on East-west streets increase by 100 after each street it progresses by Charles Street.
For example, 2322 Saint Paul Street would be on Saint Paul between 23rd and 24th Street. 204 East 33rd Street would be on 33rd between Calvert Street and Guilford Avenue.
It may sound complicated but it begins to make sense once you travel around Baltimore. If you know where the major roads fall within the grid it can make finding an address easier.
They're mad from the father's side of the family, usually.
Quote from: NE2 on September 26, 2013, 04:13:22 AM
They're mad from the father's side of the family, usually.
FYI it was a typo as it is supposed to be "made" however you cannot edit topic thread titles or I would have fixed it.
Also about grids, why does Newark, NJ have two boundary lines for East and West? You have Elizabeth Avenue that has streets with East and West on each side of it, then in another section of Newark you have East Kinney in Ironbound that becomes West Kinney either at the Amtrak NE Corridor or Broad Street. Not in any linear line for the two bases and also you have Elizabeth Avenue does not even run the whole length of the city either so to be a dividing base line would not be the best choice their either.
In nearby Linden, NJ they at least get it right with the Amtrak Corridor as base line for N-S and Wood Avenue as base line for E-W and it and Roselle (neighbor to Linden) uses Chestnut Street for E-W running streets, hence why East St. George Avenue in Linden is just plain St. George Avenue where NJ 27 straddles the Roselle- Linden Border because both Roselle and Linden have the two different base lines. In fact East St. George is only NB NJ 27 as the community boundary begins at Wood Avenue and its entire length is the boundary line.
The bottom line is each city or town has its very own way of numbering streets, only seem to be keeping odd and even numbers separate on different sides. I am wondering though, where streets do straddle municipal borders might have a rare case where both sides of the street may have odd or even numbers together though. There should be a least a uniform way of numbering them for public safety sake and continuity purposes.
Quote from: roadman65 on September 26, 2013, 11:18:54 AM
however you cannot edit topic thread titles or I would have fixed it.
You can. Edit the first post.
Quote from: NE2 on September 26, 2013, 11:21:25 AM
Quote from: roadman65 on September 26, 2013, 11:18:54 AM
however you cannot edit topic thread titles or I would have fixed it.
You can. Edit the first post.
I ll Check it out.
And I believe I got it! Thanks.
Quote from: vtk on September 25, 2013, 09:59:15 PM
Quote from: corco on September 25, 2013, 08:55:18 PM
I mean, I don't know...if you don't think addresses are appropriate for emergency response, I'd really like to hear what a better idea is. For purposes of this exercise, you can only use technology that existed 20 years ago, since that's what existed when emergency response became address dependent.
A proper system for identifying locations or buildings rather than mailboxes would probably either be a 2D coordinate system of some kind (for places with a lot of very open space and/or a lack of named roads) or something that looks a lot like mailing addresses. But such a system should certainly not be guaranteed or even encouraged to match mailing addresses in all cases, and should have rules to prevent oddities that make it difficult for a visitor to find a specified location.
Actually, I think it would be really useful to have a geographic position shorthand (Lat/Lon or UTM-grid-based) which leaves off several most-significant digits, instead using a city name to disambiguate. Local city maps can be made available with this grid overlaid, and GPS navigation devices can be made to understand this system. Then, a business or your cousin or the guy who answered your Craigs List ad can inform you of their location in this system, and you can look it up on a map or enter it in your GPS to find them, without being subject to faulty geocoding services or having to walk up and down the block looking for an out-of-sequence mailbox number. Sadly, that's not been a popular strategy.
UK post codes work well for this. For many addresses the post code itself is unique. For others, post code and house number are unique. It makes things much simpler to enter into a GPS.
Quote from: realjd on September 26, 2013, 05:09:29 PM
UK post codes work well for this. For many addresses the post code itself is unique. For others, post code and house number are unique. It makes things much simpler to enter into a GPS.
Same goes for Canada. The first half (or the Forward Sortation Area, FSA) of my postal code "L3T" refers to the city in which I live (look to the left), while the second half (or the Local Delivery Unit, LDU, which for privacy reasons shall not be posted on this forum) narrows it down to about 40 apartment units. In the case of houses, that might refer to about 10-20 houses or a block.
ZIP+4 in the US gets it down to the city block. The street number does the rest. Of course, only the bulk mailers know the ZIP+4 codes.
Quote from: sammi on September 26, 2013, 05:37:52 PM
Quote from: realjd on September 26, 2013, 05:09:29 PM
UK post codes work well for this. For many addresses the post code itself is unique. For others, post code and house number are unique. It makes things much simpler to enter into a GPS.
Same goes for Canada. The first half (or the Forward Sortation Area, FSA) of my postal code "L3T" refers to the city in which I live (look to the left), while the second half (or the Local Delivery Unit, LDU, which for privacy reasons shall not be posted on this forum) narrows it down to about 40 apartment units. In the case of houses, that might refer to about 10-20 houses or a block.
Yes but the GPS device still needs an accurate database of all these postcodes, and forget about manually looking them up on a map...
Quote from: theline on September 26, 2013, 08:43:23 PM
ZIP+4 in the US gets it down to the city block. The street number does the rest. Of course, only the bulk mailers know the ZIP+4 codes.
I have seen some do zip+6 to get all unique zip codes, with the last 2 digits being the last 2 digits of your address.
In Cleveland & Cuyahoga County in Cleveland, there are two sets of grids (at least for numbering on east-west streets) -- one is for the East Side, one for the West side. The line of division is based on Ontario Street in downtown Cleveland, and ultimately runs south down the center of Broadview Road/OH-176 by the time you reach the Summit County line.
In much of the Grand Junction/Mesa County CO area, the streets running east-west have addresses based on the # of miles your house or business is due east of the Utah state line and the North-South streets are (I believe) based on the distance from the geographical north/south center of Mesa County.
Because of this, you'll find a lot of houses and businesses (especially in densely-packed areas) with addresses with the -1/2 suffix (i.e. 752-1/2 Horizon Drive), which can cause hissy fits for some GPS systems and postal/package delivery services -- people may list it as "752.5 Horizon Drive" or may just leave off the 1/2 (or .5) completely.
Look at how much fun you can have if your address is something like 1502-1/2 K-3/10 Road, Apt. G!! :crazy:
253-1/8 Elm St., Navin Johnson's ill-fated filling station washroom abode:
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi40.tinypic.com%2F25u2mmt.jpg&hash=57d88c4fa79b72fbd54de0904f06e93955271c51)
Source: http://cinema-fanatic.com/2012/08/14/movie-quote-of-the-day-the-jerk-1979-dir-carl-reiner/ (http://cinema-fanatic.com/2012/08/14/movie-quote-of-the-day-the-jerk-1979-dir-carl-reiner/)
In Denver, the street grid starts at 0/0 (sometimes listed on street signs as 00/00) at the corner of Broadway (a major north/south arterial) and Ellsworth (an otherwise nondescript neighborhood street). The east/west blocks generally run 16 per mile, and the north/south blocks run 8 per mile. The grid prevails throughout Denver, Arapahoe, Adams (except parts of the City of Brighton), and Jefferson (except parts of the City of Golden) counties. It also extends into the northern part of Douglas County (the Highlands Ranch/Lone Tree areas) which are essentially southern extensions of Denver Metro, and parts of Broomfield (which used both the Denver and Boulder numbering systems--as well as its own--before becoming an independent City and County). Another "quirk" is that if you're given an address of "1182 Broadway", it's assumed that it's 1182 NORTH Broadway. North addresses do not have the "North" direction added.
Quote from: Mark68 on September 27, 2013, 05:18:59 PM
In Denver, the street grid starts at 0/0 (sometimes listed on street signs as 00/00) at the corner of Broadway (a major north/south arterial) and Ellsworth (an otherwise nondescript neighborhood street). The east/west blocks generally run 16 per mile, and the north/south blocks run 8 per mile. The grid prevails throughout Denver, Arapahoe, Adams (except parts of the City of Brighton), and Jefferson (except parts of the City of Golden) counties. It also extends into the northern part of Douglas County (the Highlands Ranch/Lone Tree areas) which are essentially southern extensions of Denver Metro, and parts of Broomfield (which used both the Denver and Boulder numbering systems--as well as its own--before becoming an independent City and County). Another "quirk" is that if you're given an address of "1182 Broadway", it's assumed that it's 1182 NORTH Broadway. North addresses do not have the "North" direction added.
Ellsworth must have been an important street in Denver in the way back past, I assume... either that, or some big wig lived on the street and wanted the numbers to start with him!
ICTRds
Wichita, and all of unincorporated Sedgwick County, bases all addresses and streets off of the intersection of Main (N-S) and Douglas (E-W). They tend to be eight blocks to a mile N-S, and 16 blocks to a mile E-W, and they figure in 100 blocks. I don't think numbering continues out into other counties around us (haven't seen it), but some street names do. For example, one could theoretically drive on Oliver Street from the Oklahoma border to north of US 50, at the northern edge of Harvey County.
ICTRds
Quote from: WichitaRoads on September 28, 2013, 12:54:53 PM
Quote from: Mark68 on September 27, 2013, 05:18:59 PM
In Denver, the street grid starts at 0/0 (sometimes listed on street signs as 00/00) at the corner of Broadway (a major north/south arterial) and Ellsworth (an otherwise nondescript neighborhood street). The east/west blocks generally run 16 per mile, and the north/south blocks run 8 per mile. The grid prevails throughout Denver, Arapahoe, Adams (except parts of the City of Brighton), and Jefferson (except parts of the City of Golden) counties. It also extends into the northern part of Douglas County (the Highlands Ranch/Lone Tree areas) which are essentially southern extensions of Denver Metro, and parts of Broomfield (which used both the Denver and Boulder numbering systems--as well as its own--before becoming an independent City and County). Another "quirk" is that if you're given an address of "1182 Broadway", it's assumed that it's 1182 NORTH Broadway. North addresses do not have the "North" direction added.
Ellsworth must have been an important street in Denver in the way back past, I assume... either that, or some big wig lived on the street and wanted the numbers to start with him!
ICTRds
Ellsworth was made the N/S divider so that Colfax Ave (the 15th Ave equivalent in the normal grid) connected to 15th St (diagonal downtown grid) at Broadway.
King County's is based entirely on Seattle's road numbering system, which continues to the rest of the county.
If you lived just north of NE 47th St on 17th Ave NE, then your address would be 47XX 17th Ave NE. If you lived just west of that intersection on 47th St, your address would be 16XX NE 47th St. It makes it pretty damn easy to find where you need to go. You can literally look at the address and know immediately where it is geographically. You just have to know where NE changes to N or NW, etc.
I'm pretty sure most counties with numbered roads do this.
I'm not sure how Florence does it, so I'll use Cincinnati as an example, specifically downtown.
In downtown, East/West numbers begin at 0, with Vine Street being the transition from east to west. No east to west street in downtown extends more than 1 mile continuously except 9th Street (which combines with 7th once it crosses over I-75 to form West 8th Street -- go figure). In measuring, however, every mile east or west of Vine is 1000.
Once you get into north/south streets, that 1000 addresses/mile thing goes out the window to an extent because the river is the de facto boundary (being the southern boundary of the city and state). Also, there are no 10th or 11th Streets, but there are Court Street and Central Parkway. So it's +/- 100 on that end of things.
Quote from: Doctor Whom on September 25, 2013, 12:47:38 PM
In Montgomery County, MD, the unincorporated areas and most of the smaller municipalities (i.e., most of the county) base their numbering system roughly on DC's, which is roughly a Cartesian grid with its origin at the Capitol. It thus makes sense that in the subdivision where I grew up, numbers began with 4800 on east-west streets and 10900 on north-south streets.
Kensington or Garrett Park, perhaps?
To add to the fun, since the (virtual) boundary between Northwest and Northeast Washington extends north into Montgomery County, the east-west streets come down to unit blocks in the eastern part of the county. Hence Md. 193 is University Boulevard West on the west side of U.S. 29, and University Boulevard East on the east side of 29 (I grew up near there). Same thing happens in Prince George's County, though there the boundary is between Northeast Washington and Southeast Washington, and the boundary is reasonably well-defined by Central Avenue and East Capitol Street (Md. 214).
Quote from: corco on September 26, 2013, 12:14:09 AM
QuoteHow is it decided which side of the street will be even or odd addresses?
...
In a grid system, if your origin is in the middle of the road, typically your north and west sides of the street will have odd numbers.
How universal is this, really? In my county, the south side of the street is odd.
I've heard it said that the odd numbers will be on your right if the numbers are increasing as you travel down the street, which I've since found to be only mostly true here in New England.
Quote from: corco on September 26, 2013, 12:14:09 AM
In a grid system, if your origin is in the middle of the road, typically your north and west sides of the street will have odd numbers.
Not always though. This varies quite considerably from municipality to municipality. It can also cause some confusion where two municipalities with differing even/odd systems meet. Here's an example in Illinois:
Around Chicago, odds are commonly on the west and south sides of the street with evens on the east and north sides; however, a few municipalities around here do things differently. Joliet has odds on the north and west, neighboring Crest Hill has odds on the south and west. They share a street, Theodore Street (IL-7) between them. Now, as Joliet uses evens on the south side of a street, and Crest Hill uses evens on the north side of the street, all addresses along Theodore are even from Broadway (IL-53) to the Joliet Junction Trail (former EJ&E RR line). There are no odd addresses along Theodore during that stretch. Fortunately, there are few potential conflicting addresses.
Quote from: KEK Inc. on October 01, 2013, 05:58:39 AM
King County's is based entirely on Seattle's road numbering system, which continues to the rest of the county.
If you lived just north of NE 47th St on 17th Ave NE, then your address would be 47XX 17th Ave NE. If you lived just west of that intersection on 47th St, your address would be 16XX NE 47th St. It makes it pretty damn easy to find where you need to go. You can literally look at the address and know immediately where it is geographically. You just have to know where NE changes to N or NW, etc.
I'm pretty sure most counties with numbered roads do this.
Except the city of Auburn has its own numbering grid, surrounded by King County's grid.
Seattle's is only easy once you're in the right general area. It's easy to think you're near the right spot and then discover that you're in East streets instead of East streets and avenues. The worst of the peculiarities are not continued into King County.
The King County grid typically goes up by 2000 house numbers per mile. It is a dense grid, to allow flag lots, small apartment houses, etc., to each have their own house number.
The county I used to live in went to a 911 system about 20 years ago. All addresses outside the county seat and one other town went to a system where 1000 = 1 mile. My house was 704, meaning 0.704 miles from where the road began. There wasn't any odd/even left/right split as far as I remember.
(fixed misplaced decimal point)
Coshocton County, Ohio uses a grid with about a thousand numbers to the mile, but the origin is somewhere else entirely, and I'm not sure why. The range is 31000-61000 from west to east and 14000-34000 from south to north. Estimating it with Google Earth's ruler, the origin looks to be in eastern Franklin County, somewhere around Reynoldsburg.
Edit: I think it was to match up with Knox County to the west and Muskingum County to the south. So one baseline is the western edge of Knox County, and the other is somewhere in the middle of Muskingum County.
In New Orleans, the grid is based off the old French Quarter. Canal Street is the dividing line between areas upriver and downriver and starts at 100 and increase by 100 per block, as the grid mainly follows the Mississippi River. Most streets closer to the river are marked North and South; however, addresses going downriver are marked North while addresses going upriver are marked South. Also, address numbers go up from the river to Lake Pontchartrain. From Canal Street, the address numbers continues to increase through New Orleans East.