Two streets on the same road??

A residential road near me has two different street names for the two opposite sides of the road. How do I show this on the map using Potlatch? :slight_smile:

Jurisdictional boundary down the middle?
Iā€™m not sure. Iā€™d say to use alt_name, but neither oneā€™s really the ā€œalternateā€ name.

See ā€œname:leftā€ and ā€œname:rightā€ and this wiki:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/right_left

I never liked the :left and :right stuff. It seems too prone to breaking. Consider that youā€™re redrawing a way for greater precision. The way I typically do this is by either drawing a whole new way and hitting R to apply the tags of the old, or by deleting all but one end node and redrawing it from that end. Either way, thereā€™s a 1/2 chance of breaking anything that depends on the direction of the way, and a decent chance of not realizing it.

But I canā€™t think of a better way to do it, so yeah.

Essentially the physical road itself is known by 2 names, so alt_name is probably OK. The only issue is which to give rendering preference.

The houses are the features which are addressed differently on opposing sides of the road. Therefore a reasonable solution would be to survey it and record the house-numbering making sure to record the proper street name on the addressing ways/nodes.

ā€˜alt_nameā€™ is an rough approximation. It does not say which name applies to which side. Thatā€™s why ā€œ:leftā€ and ā€œ:rightā€ have been created. Think also for navigation systems or address relations.

Navigation systems are not an issue because street signs should have both names (unless itā€™s a dual carriageway, in which case thereā€™s no problem). Street signs on minor streets may only have the name on that side, but half the time they donā€™t even post the major street name at an intersection, only the minor one.

Iā€™m not sure how address relations work, but it seems they should include the street name themselves rather than relying on the way.

No. In the very rare cases I have seen in my country, they are two street signs, one on each side of the single road.

Each house has one address with a single street name, not one of two alternative names.

Hereā€™s an example (street view photo of the street sign) at a major intersection of two state roads: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=25.971703,-80.246705&spn=0.008555,0.020556&t=k&z=17&layer=c&cbll=25.971845,-80.246916&panoid=QOeR_HC9RKL96HAQrHbOFQ&cbp=12,167.67,0,-34.55

Of course in this area they are used to dual- and even triple-signing roads like this, where countywide grids (NW 42nd) meet local city grids (E 8th) and preexisting street names (LeJeune): http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=25.823438,-80.260384&spn=0.016649,0.041113&t=k&z=16&layer=c&cbll=25.823172,-80.265162&panoid=Z967y330t9QafOahT8Va6w&cbp=12,266.42,0,-3.36
This street has all three names in both directions.

Okay, in that case, alt_name applies. But remember the original post which was about different names in different directions.