[HN Gopher] House Address "Twins" Proximity (2017)
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House Address "Twins" Proximity (2017)
Author : itsjloh
Score : 60 points
Date : 2022-06-19 07:54 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.paulplowman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.paulplowman.com)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I spoke to a chap who lived on the other side of the road (who,
| quite rightly, wanted to know why I was taking photos of people's
| houses). Apparently they've been trying for ages to get the two
| councils to put up signage to clarify the situation.
|
| Can't they put up their own signs?
| wiredfool wrote:
| Similarly confusing -- I lived for a while in an estate where the
| roads were named "The Avenue", "The Street", "The Court", "The
| Drive" and so on.
|
| It was a PITA to explain to delivery people, especially because
| it was before there were Eircodes, so there was no postal code in
| common use to direct people there without the confusing names.
| exegete wrote:
| Got caught up with a "nonexistent twin" for my old address.
|
| I had address "123 Some AVE." in the town. There was also a road
| named "Some PLACE" in the town but there was not a 123 for the
| house number anywhere on the "Some Pl." road. "123 Some Pl." does
| not exist in the town.
|
| BUT, you can type in "123 Some Pl." in Google or Apple Maps along
| with the town name and the maps program will just throw you at
| the closest numbering house on "Some Pl." If you're not paying
| attention you just think it's the correct address.
|
| Somehow my voter registration was set to the "123 Some Pl." (but
| my driver's license was correct) so I was in the wrong voting
| district (quick phone call cleared that up). Also sometimes
| packages would try to get delivered over there to "123 Some Pl.".
| BryantD wrote:
| Not as good as his find, but close pairs do exist in the US:
| https://goo.gl/maps/ZisYmkTEJsd6Rw1f8
| cesaref wrote:
| The key to the confusing house numbering is that when a long road
| crosses between multiple towns, the numbers start again from 1.
|
| So, to achieve the proximity effect, you want to find two towns
| which are close together, but which have expanded to form a
| continuous conurbation.
|
| You then need a road which either 'clips' one of these towns, and
| hence has numbers starting from 1 but then quickly moves to
| another town, where the numbers get reset, or, where the road
| starts just over the border into one town, and hence again,
| starts from 1 before quickly crossing into another town.
|
| We live in the UK city of Brighton. Actually, Brighton had a
| neighbouring town, Hove, and the two councils merged in the 90s
| to form 'Brighton and Hove' but this is often abbreviated to
| Brighton, and this town became a city in 2000.
|
| So, any road that crosses between Brighton and Hove will have
| this number reset problem. We happen to live 200 yards from the
| Brighton and Hove 'border' for want of a better name, and our
| road crosses, so we have another identically numbered house on
| the same road 400 yards away.
|
| The road itself runs for a number of miles, so there is at least
| one other house with the same address that I know of (in
| Portslade, the next town along). We occasionally get confused
| delivery drivers and post from the postman where we try and work
| out from the address who the package is for. I've met the current
| owners of the other two similar addresses, so we can help point
| things in the right direction.
| Beldin wrote:
| Is it common for the name of the street not to change when
| entering a new municipality?
|
| Because in .nl, I know this happens and I'm pretty sure this is
| the common thing for major roads connecting small hubs.
| Actually, a road connecting village A to hamlet B would
| typically be called "A'seweg" (A road) in B and "B'seweg" (B
| road) in A. If they go through and connect more municipalities,
| they might become a numbered road (eg, N281), but that you
| cannot use in an address.
| cesaref wrote:
| It does seem to be a common pattern here, that the old roads
| tend to name where they are going (which obviously only works
| in one direction!). For example, we have a 'London Road'
| which starts in the middle of Brighton, and takes you to
| London, which is 50 miles away.
|
| We also have quite a number of roman roads, although not that
| many around where we live, which criss cross the country, and
| can travel for hundreds of miles, for example, the Fosse Way,
| here's google's name match, but if you zoom in on sections of
| this, you can see the fairly straight roman road with
| different 'B' road numbers (but still called Fosse Way):
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/search/fosse+way/@52.3459536,-2..
| ..
| jfk13 wrote:
| > For example, we have a 'London Road' which starts in the
| middle of Brighton, and takes you to London, which is 50
| miles away
|
| And naturally enough, at the London end (e.g. in Croydon),
| it's named 'Brighton Road'.
| iso1631 wrote:
| I lived in a rental house in the Salford Council area about 10
| years ago. I was shocked to find a letter from a collection
| agency on behalf of the council one day, and assumed it must be a
| previous tenant.
|
| Closer inspection revealed the postcode was wrong -- the goons
| had hand delivered it to an address 5 miles away. Same number,
| same street, same council area, completely different postcode
| (M28 vs M5)
| dwighttk wrote:
| I lived at a 600 Carver St for a while. It was technically 600
| West Carver. We would get mail for people in 600 East Carver
| (which was too far away to end up in a list of closest same
| addresses, and should have been a different address anyway) but
| the names of the people at the addresses and the presence or
| absence of east or west in the addresses never seemed to
| disambiguate the addresses reliably for the post office.
| ghaff wrote:
| I live on Main St. It used to be North Main until quite a few
| decades ago when an interstate spur cut through the road a
| little ways down. (Basically, the road makes a hard turn near
| the middle of town and apparently Main St. just used to be,
| well, the main street in town before the turn.) Now North Main
| is reserved for just a small spur that dead ends at the
| interstate and river.
|
| When I moved in (pre-consumer GPS days) I used to be regularly
| berated by service people for giving them the wrong address
| when I told them Main St. because a lot of the maps still
| showed North Main at least a decade or two later. And, somewhat
| amusingly, I observe that the telcos (Verizon and Comcast)
| STILL (maybe 5 decades out) still show my address at N MAIN.
| (When I bought the house, as I recall, there was even some
| paperwork that XXX Main St. was really the same address as XXX
| North Main St.
|
| Although this change probably predated that, the introduction
| of E911 in the US led to a lot of cleanup of address
| irregularities such as summer cabins that didn't really have a
| proper address, rural delivery without a street address, roads
| with a break in the middle, etc.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Where we live, you can get the same house number on, e.g. "North
| 8th St." and "North 8th Rd." (and possibly "North 8th Dr." and
| maybe "North 8th Pl.") a block or two apart. It's fairly common
| to have at least two of those.
|
| And it's maddening. I'd be curious to know if this situation is
| similarly common.
| Macha wrote:
| I have previously lived on such a street. XYZ Road parallel to
| XYZ Street
| mason55 wrote:
| Sounds like Queens NY
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I had no idea Queens did that too. I guess it's more common
| than I suspected.
| umanwizard wrote:
| This is very common in the Phoenix area.
| myself248 wrote:
| Tramway in Albuquerque. Most of the streets in the northeast
| corner of town are named Tramway Something.
|
| Here's a route that starts on Tramway Vista Loop NE, makes a
| right onto Tramway Vista Place NE, a left onto Tramway Lane NE,
| a left onto Tramway Place NE, bears left as it changes names to
| Tramway Circle NE, (makes a left onto Cedar Hill Road NE,
| sorry!), makes a left onto Tramway Boulevard NE, then a right
| onto Tramway Road NE, and finally a left onto Tramway Circle
| NE.
|
| Many of these also have overlapping address number ranges, but
| I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/7sKNNIQ.png
|
| For more, try Peachtree in Atlanta.
| toolslive wrote:
| My home town (Leopoldsburg) had 2 streets with the same name
| (Boskantstraat), that crossed each other. So on the crossing, all
| streets had the same name. There uses to be no houses or other
| things to help with orientation. Great fun on a foggy autumn
| night.
| marssaxman wrote:
| My house in Seattle has such a twin, two miles south. The only
| difference is the directional suffix: their street is South,
| while ours - unlike most Seattle streets - does not have a
| directional. Of course this has led to constant delivery mix-ups,
| when Google or some other service helpfully "corrects" our
| address to the other. My own sister once mistakenly followed her
| GPS to the wrong house!
| iso1631 wrote:
| In the UK it's common to use the postcode for pretty much
| everything, if you're delivering to 443 Manchester Road Bolton
| BL4 8RN, you aren't going to 443 Manchester Road Salford, M27
| 8TD.
|
| Now OK in this particular case you're still screwed as they are
| literally next door, but normally you'd find it by putting in
| "M27 8TD" and you'd be set.
|
| While UK postcodes can cover a large area, they usually don't.
|
| My understanding of zip codes like 90210 is they aren't
| anywhere near as precise as M27 8TD, they're more like just the
| "M27" part.
| craz8 wrote:
| US zip codes are actually 10 characters, eg 90210-3356
|
| These last 4 provide the resolution needed to avoid this
| confusion.
|
| I too live in the Seattle area and have this same
| doppelganger problem, so I use the full zip code when
| possible (not all web sites allow it, and the last mile
| delivery is by hand, so can still go wrong)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I live in a neighborhood where houses are numbered by
| block, starting at "100" at the city center (many/most US
| address schemes work this way)
|
| Due to being nearly the same distance east and north from
| the center point, there is a house around the corner that
| has the same address number as mine, theirs is "East" and
| mine is "North" _and_ the street name is different. I don
| 't know if we both have the same 10-digit zip code, but we
| do still get each other's mail at least a few times a
| month.
| sokoloff wrote:
| We got caught out by this on a beach vacation. Our infant son was
| running a fever and ultimately had a febrile seizure, scaring the
| crap out of us.
|
| We were in the west half of a duplex on East 1st Street, so the
| address was 123W E First St. I called 911 and in the process sent
| the first responders to 123 W First St. (Everything turned out
| okay, but response was delayed by at least 10 minutes. I
| recommended they change the addresses to 123A and 123B instead of
| East and West. That was denied.)
| Fatnino wrote:
| (2017)
| luplex wrote:
| I got nerdsniped hard by this. If I can find the data, I might
| try to replicate the analysis for Germany.
|
| I learned that in Japan, it's quite common for neighbors to have
| the exact same address, if the entrances fall in the same number
| zone.
|
| As always, addressing is a story that shows us that all our nice
| simple abstractions don't suffice. An address is not always
| street+house number.
| ghaff wrote:
| Although I've been there a number of times, I'm not sure I've
| ever totally gotten the Japanese addressing system.
| Fortunately, with GPS it's a fair bit easier these days.
| BlueGh0st wrote:
| https://archive.ph/kbJSX
|
| (Site isn't loading for me)
| [deleted]
| buro9 wrote:
| I grew up in a 149 High Street. About 300m away was another 149
| High Street. They both originally belonged to different villages
| but London's growth had filled in the gaps between the villages.
|
| We knew who lived there as it wasn't too infrequent that their
| post arrived at ours or vice versa.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Weird, the post code should have been different.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| About 10 years ago when still I lived in California, I began
| receiving postal mail for another house with the same number that
| had recently been built on my street one mile to the north, but
| in another city. This went on for a while until I finally
| complained to the Postmaster.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| People who assign confusing house numbers and confusing street
| names have a special place in hell. What if an ambulance won't
| reach you in time because of an address confusion?
| bencollier49 wrote:
| It's an interesting observation that a lot of these are in the
| North West. We're around there and live on a road with a twin
| about 500m away. It can occasionally be problematic, but
| postcodes certainly help.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Addresses should be UUIDs stored on a blockchain.
| LocalH wrote:
| As an American, I find this type of British minutiae to be
| extremely fascinating.
| netsharc wrote:
| The last map seems to show several houses on that street with
| same numbers, because it looks like on the west side of that
| border the numbers go up to 443 from west to east, and on the
| east side of it, the numbers go up towards 443 from east to west.
|
| Google Maps[1] seems to confirm it, there are two 441's several
| houses away from each other separated by the two 443's (actually
| just separated by 1 house because they're semi-detached houses),
| and then two 439's, two 437's, and it goes on..
|
| [1] https://goo.gl/maps/wTtQKtRqdLv2rfZ5A
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The last map seems to show several houses on that street with
| same numbers, because it looks like on the west side of that
| border the numbers go up to 443 from west to east, and on the
| east side of it, the numbers go up towards 443 from east to
| west.
|
| It's weirder than that. On the odd side, Bolton counts up to
| 443 and then, as you cross into Manchester, Manchester counts
| down from 443. But at least the progression of numbers makes
| sense.
|
| On the even side, it looks like Bolton counts up to 538 (which
| is directly across from 443) and then, once you cross the
| border, Manchester counts down from 408 (also directly across
| from 443).
|
| Why are the even numbers so disconnected from the odd numbers?
| timthorn wrote:
| As a general rule, even numbers are on one side of the street
| and odd numbers on the other. Some more details here:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_numbering
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Why don't the councils let the people on each half of the
| street vote for a new name for their half? The two votes could
| take place years apart, so it doesn't strictly need the
| councils to be closely cooperating.
|
| I suppose the failure mode would be that one side refuses to
| propose a new name, and it's unfair to reward that side by
| letting them keep the existing name. Also, the two sides might
| both vote for the same new name, but maybe that could be
| resolved with a coin toss.
|
| Another alternative would be some sort of Dutch auction, where
| the two sides try to under-bid each other for some cash reward
| for having their side renamed. Actually running that auction in
| a democratically legitimate way might be a bit complicated,
| though, and obviously the money would have to come from
| somewhere.
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