I have re-written the addr:milestone=* proposal hopefully covering all discussed issues, but had unwillingly skipped sending it out to the RFC and had sent out to the Wiki Talk page thinking this was all required to do. I’ve now been proven wrong, so I am summiting this proposal now to follow the correct process.
The purpose of this tag is to:
Add a tag to standardize the rural address scheme
Substitutes other inconsistent address tags currently in use, with a more easy-to-follow, precise tag - this tag will replace the inconsistent use of addr:housenumber and add:full which leave too much room for misinterpretations.
Specifically needed for rural address systems found through the world.
How important is it for this proposal definition, that “highway distance markers” are involved? Would it be equally ok, if someone measured or estimated the distance from “start”? It is not so uncommon here (Italy) to see distance related numbers painted on walls nears entrances, (and likely used in addressing), but not milestone markers around (unless I have missed them). I think there are two kind of situations, places “without” housenumbers, who just wrote a number on the wall so they can get easier their parcels, and officially asigned numbers which refer to the road distance rather than incrementing in single steps like normal housenumbers do.
FWIW, I would like to cater for both situations (in the same way), also because it is not always obvious from being on the ground which of these is in place.
This RFC was originally made in 2019. The author started voting now, because he thought the RFC was already done. Some people complained, so he stopped voting and started again a new RFC.
The people that are still voting are the ones who didn’t read the first paragraph in OP nor the big box in voting section, stating that voting has stopped.
To be honest, I don’t know what the author is supposed to do with current votes? Delete them? People who understand better OSM bureaucracy can help with this?
I don’t know exactly the author original idea, but for me, the simplest thing is to respect whatever the number is pointed in the address.
For example, if a house is located somewhere between 20 and 21 km (signed), and the owner of the property use as address “Highway 1, km 20”, I would use addr:milestone=20.
If there is no highway markers around but the owner still uses some X value, I would still use addr:milestone=X.
I don’t think the mapper is responsible to measure the value/distance from the beginning of the highway to confirm that. If the owner is using that address, it is because it means something (they receive their parcels there, use that address for utilities etc), so who are we from OSM to not respect that?
I agree with this, I would simply copy the number that they wrote at their door / gate (or receipt/business card/website, if it is a business POI), regardless of accuracy or other references like close by milestones, at least as long as it is reasonably consistent with the distances and other numbers in the area. IMHO the proposal should state this explicitly.
In Russia, sometimes both milestone and housenumber are used, something like “Калужское шоссе, 21-й км, д. 3” (Kaluga Highway, 21 km, 3). Simultaneous use of addr:street, addr:milestone and addr:housenumber seems problematic: if a consumer is unaware of addr:milestone, it would form a wrong address from addr:street and addr:housenumber. The proposal should clarify, what to do in this case: either invent another tag like addr:milestone:housenumber or not use addr:milestone at all in this case, including instead the milestone either to addr:street or to addr:place. (Both latter variants are actually used for such addresses in Russia, with no consensus.)
Finding an accurate, “bullet-proof” concept for a new tag to adapt to all circumstances found around the globe I’ve learned now is a big challenge, and achieving this goal in a single proposal would be an even bigger challenge: impossible to acheive - or plain luck. I agree that there will need to be some “fine-tuning” for the usage of this “much better understood by those who live in places where this is commonly used”-tag, but just as many of the already approved/“in-use” tags on OSM have been modified over time, or have even been deprecated and are no longer in use, this addr:milestone tag proposal is no exception to that. I’ve tried to propose a needed tag, based on my findings during years of traveling to many different countries - but admittedly, this tag may not suite all needs or tastes. However, this is a starting point for it to evolve accordingly, as needed.
On this newer version of the proposal I’ve tried to cover and comply to most of the accurate comments made, but I am also aware this is not the “holy-grail” of tags and can certainly be perfected over time.
I also wish to apologize to all the OSM community members for not having sent this proposal through all the proper channels this second time around, but reviving an old proposal to me seems a bit more complicated than creating an entire new one (one of the reasons it took so long!). In all the confusion, the proposal has already been voted-on by many community members (entirely my fault), and I am still not certain on how to go about it - does all this need to be deleted, does it somehow need to be shown as a failed attempt for voting or is “leave-as-is” the proper way to go? - I have no idea on how to proceed in this case.
I do appreciate all feedback as every little piece of information helps to better understand how things are so different around the different parts of the world. Muchas gracias.
This is common notation for many regions but not for all, hence the challenge, but I think those regions can discard the option if not used. We should focus therefor in cases where it is used.
addr:milestone:housenumber
In my opinion, this shouldn’t be a problem It would help further distinguish a place address to have a rough idea of the location, nothing more. At te end the POI will have the location (coordinates). It’s more fore search purposes and formalizing contact addresses, etc.
What is not clear for me is the units per region. Should it be implicit by location or specified when adding? Any experts here?
Also, the distance in addr;milestone is not a precise distance from the Km 0 of that way, as the trace of way could have been changed since the milestones were put in their locations. The addr;milestone is more or less like an imprecise reference between two milestones, but enough to communicate to other people a location, as is (at least around here) used in rural areas and the house density is low, so maybe when you are going to some address, you see the milestone and know that your destination is in the following hundred meters. BTW, this format of address, AFAIK doesn’t specify in which side of the road is the address, but it just doesn’t matter, you just can get there, and most probably there is only one house/entrance around.
Another thing to note is that the addr:housenumer is a number in a house/door. This is not true for addr:milestone, it is a reference to existing milestones on the road, in some highway the milestones are separated aprox 1km away, in others half kilometer. Maybe some shops or amenities put their “addr:milestone” in their front door, but it’s not the usual case here in Uruguay.
Agree.
If we model an address like structured pieces of data, street name, housenumber, suburb, city, etc, “addr:milestone” is just another piece in that structure. In some countries it is used, in others not, in some places some combinations of the parts are valid and others not.
The localization of address is also needed for data consumers to take an structured address data from OSM and display like the real address was.
e.g. in english speaking countries, the address is composed by addr:housenumber,addr:street
but for a poi with the same data located in a spanish speaking countries the address is: addr:streetaddr:housenumber (without the comma, and just dont put other components like city and country to not complicate the examples)
AFAIK OSM until know only describes each address component, but not how a real structured address is composed, so more formalization and some specification is needed to join the components, and as address are part of each languages, i would suggest to write them in BNF (Backus normal form). Several specifications will be needed, one for each country or territory, although probably can be reused.
It all looks OK except that “milestone” is not a good choice of word. What this appears to be is addressing based on distance from a reference point. Better choices of word might be either distance or chainage.
It may seem but it isn’t. This addressing is based on the highway milestones. This is not the same as distance, it’s a fact as this milestones measured a distance when the road was built, but if the road was updated/modified and has a new layout (that is what has happened to all or almost all of them since they were built) the old milestones stays where they are, so they don’ t represents a distance anymore. They are just valid reference points on the side of the road.
The same way a addr:housenumber Is verified: whatever is written in an address (website, contact card, talking to the owner etc).
Let’s make it clear: it is not up to the mapper to measure the distance or see actual highway milestones etc. The mapper will use this tag to represent whatever is described as the actual POI address, provided by that POI owner.
exactly, it is not the mapper who should check the distance (and make “corrections”), it is about a number that is typically written at the gate, the receipt (if it is a business), their website (again if it is a business), etc., and as a mapper you would simply copy the available information.
Hopping in to the discussion simply to point out that usage of highway milestone addressing is very typical in Greece, mostly for businesses. The distance is rarely granular; I don’t think I’ve ever heard or seen such an address that uses a decimal place, although physical milestones markers do exist for half kilometre marks.
Generally the address is very straightforward: [Ordinal number] km. [Road name]
As written, the proposal covers this use-case perfectly well.
