Texas Post Offices

Hi, new to this whole OSM thing.

Concurrent with working on post offices with the USGS National Map Corp, I’ve started added/detailing the (maaany) Post Offices in Texas. I’m using the GNIS dataset for address and other information, and verifying the right building with other imagery (I’m NOT copying any data from anywhere but GNIS, just looking and saying “Yes, that is the right building”). The whole keys/tags thing is kinda confusing, though, so I’m like some feedback on the right ones to use…

The set of fields I’m using is this…

amenity = post_office
name = …
building = yes
building:levels = …
addr:housenumber = …
addr:street = …
addr:city = …
addr:county = …
addr:state = TX
addr:country = US
addr:postcode = …
gnis:feature_id = …
gnis:class = Post Office
gnis:county = …
gnis:county_id = …
gnis:state = TX
gnis:state_id = 48
gnis:created = …
ele = …
attribution = USGS GNIS
website = http://www.usps.com/

A couple of example from the start of the list…
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2634763712
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2634780502

Ane there other tags that I should (ideally) be adding? The whole set if is_in: foo is a bit confusing…

Given that I don’t know for sure (normally) whether or not the PO is within the city limits, I was thinking the following would be right…
is_in:country = United States
is_in:country_code = US
is_in:state = Texas
is_in:state_code = TX
is_in:county = … (though I don’t see a ‘listing’ for this one anywhere)

Is any of that needed, or redundant? And is my ‘current’ stuff correct?

Thanks

For the basic field set, I believe that those look good, with the exception that most of the gnis:* tags are not needed. The gnis:* tags were brought in during the first mass import, but the current thinking is that they are not needed. At most, the gnis:feature_id would be retained for convenience as a lookup cross reference.

Ths is_in* codes are redundant, since those can be mechanically calculated based on latitude and longitude. The is_in:city would be the most useful, but as you can see, that is the most difficult - in addition the is_in_city does not specify in the US whether this is the municipal boundary or the postal mailing city.

Thanks.

Yeah, I ended up asking the same question on the irc channel, and got similar feedback. Right now I’m futzing with compiling a complete list of all the post offices into a spreadsheet, since the USPS strangely doesn’t publish the information (they only let you do radius searches). Ended up deciding to start with the GNIS list, merge in the list from ‘postmaster finder’ (which doesn’t list branches and stations, only places with a postmaster), and then start pruning/checking.

Right now I’m looking at something in the range of 1500 locations, so having a ‘simpler’ set of tags to add will be nice. :slight_smile: