If this is addressed else where sorry, I tried a few searches and come up empty. I have been working to improve OSM data in my area over the last month or so and recently downloaded a couple related apps on my droid so I could play with it while out and about to see what needs work. When I started to do this I realized a short fall in the system, and was curious what I am missing. Most of the time I use a map service on my phone it is used for directions, I click a point of interest or enter an address and ask for directions to it from my location. When I went to do this from OSM I realize the system doesn’t know where street numbers are… This made sense to me after I thought of it because that data is not being entered when we are building the streets. We upload the gps trace or trace the bing map, select the type(i.e. residential) then enter the street name from our notes and move on.
Question I have is, is there a tag we can use to mark a node with an approx street number so this ability would be available in the future? Is this data available in the US open source from the post office or such that we could bulk upload?
Yes, there is a convention to enter either a single address, or the address range of a street: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Addressing . There is a JOSM plugin to simplify the process of entering all the tags associated with Address Interpolation.
I have done some street address collection - it adds to the amount of information that must be collected.
A useful compromise is to enter the addresses of popular destinations, unusually placed buildings, or other quirks that create confusion when our map data is used for navigation.
Thank you for the link. It gave me most of the info I was looking for and will start adding address info in the future. One question though, with the shear amount of info needed to be added I am thinking of starting out by mapping my area using the way method rather than trying to map every building. Many of the streets around me have even houses down one side, and odd down the other. All mail boxes are on one side of the street however. Before I start to add this data what would the ‘proper’ or accepted way be to map these street address? Should I run two ways along the road, one down each side marking one with the odd address, the other with even? Or just run a single way with all address on it? Seems to me a single way would be the simpler method and would make better use of server space however using two ways would depict the data better. Any input is appreciated.
Also if you look at the approved feature page, http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:addr, you find mention of inclusion of tiger data for addressing. If tiger data is out there for this information, is there any plans to mass upload this type of data to OSM to get a good start kind of like what OSM did for streets in the US?
The best is having two lines. It can be also helpful for your navigation system later, especially in dual carriage ways where the side of the destination is important to know.
For such particular questions regarding the activities of a local community, you should better contact the forum or the mailing list dedicated to the US community:
http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=20
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
In the US, there have been many thousands of hours in improving the roadways since the original TIGER import. Mass importing the TIGER address data results in address ways that no longer follow the roads. Many would object to the extra map clutter, although if it were accurate, it would be correct to use it.
The biggest problem with TIGER address data is that it is anonymized for privacy reasons. While it could be tagged with the appropriate accuracy tag as an estimated address interpolation way, it would be of limited usefulness since geolocation will only locate to the nearest block.
Any app wishing to do geolocation with TIGER data can easily use the TIGER addressing data as a separate data source- just search first directly in OSM for high-accuracy geolocation. If the address data is not present in OSM, fall back to TIGER address way and get a rough location.