Can OpenStreetMap find Rural Grid Addresses?

Help and support
1

I am trying to us OpenStreetMap to map addresses that may be in the normal “1234 Main St, AnyCity, State” format or in a rural grid address format: “1000 North 1234 East, Any City, State”. The first ones work fine, unless there is an Apartment or Suite number in the address. The second format does not work at all, it just finds nothing.

Is there some trick to searching for Rural Grid Addresses or for addresses that have Apartment or Suite numbers in them?

Thanks

3

This is a style of addressing used in some US States, such as Utah. “1000 North 1234 East” means 10 blocks north of the center of town, and 12+ blocks east of the center of town.

2

Can you explain to the layman what “1000 North 1234 East, Any City,
State” is? Are these local coordinates starting at some 0,0 position in
the Southwest, and if so, how does one determine the 0,0 position for
“Any City”?

4

These addresses are handled like any other address in OSM using a housenumber of ‘1000’ and a street with the name of ‘North 1234 East’. If you cannot find the address, the problem in the US is usually the directional prefix/suffix. There tends to be disagreement whether to add it or not between addresses and street names. This throws the geocoder off. On top of this there is an issue in Utah where they have used an addressing schema for directional prefixes that is slightly different from the rest of the world. There is an open issue in Nominatim, which needs a wider discussion in the US community first.

Apartment and suite numbers are currently not handled. You need to clean the data before sending it to the geocoder.

5

@jhstephenson

" I am dealing with: 2492 EAST 4300 NORTH, FILER, ID, 83328. OpenStreetMap just returns ‘No Address Found’"

The main reason for that would be that that address doesn’t exist in OSM!

After comparing Google & OSM, you are looking here: OpenStreetMap & as you see, there’s no listing for #2492.

Other issues are that in OSM, “East 4300 North” is part of Twin Falls County: Way: ‪East 4300 North‬ (‪464707179‬) | OpenStreetMap, not Filer City Relation: ‪Filer‬ (‪121350‬) | OpenStreetMap

“How would I change it so that OpenStreetMap also finds it?”

Simply add a POI to OSM for #2492, as an address node / building / farm or whatever! :grinning: