Post/Zip codes and Ireland

antoinolachtnai

Mmm ... well, if you had a code breaking down to street within a townland, that would be pretty useful, at least for the bigger mail processors who have the capacity to analyse that sort of information.

The problems that the census faces in providing its service aren't that much different from those faced by a delivery company.

Maskhadov

best system to date is a 10 digit number that will get anywhere in this island:)

antoinolachtnai

You are talking about a grid reference? Have you ever tried to sort or deliver mail using the grid reference?!

Maskhadov

well with the new european gps system coming on stream it should be a straight forward job to incorporate that into mail delivery services...increasing number of cars offer car navigation

antoinolachtnai

seriously, do you think it would be easier to manually sort mail on the basis of a grid reference rather than on the basis of (say) a street address?

Alun

Maskhadov wrote:

well with the new european gps system coming on stream it should be a straight forward job to incorporate that into mail delivery services...increasing number of cars offer car navigation

WTF has the existence or otherwise of Galileo got to do with it?

Anyway, for such a system to be useful for mail sorting it has to have some kind of hierarchical nature, and work down to street level which grid references do not. An area defined by a grid reference (depending on the resolution) may encompass several streets in an urban area, which may be on completely different postal "runs".

Maskhadov

antoinolachtnai wrote:

seriously, do you think it would be easier to manually sort mail on the basis of a grid reference rather than on the basis of (say) a street address?

We should be doing it automatically like every other european country

WTF has the existence or otherwise of Galileo got to do with it?

Galileo can guide delivery services to the house.

Anyway, for such a system to be useful for mail sorting it has to have some kind of hierarchical nature, and work down to street level which grid references do not. An area defined by a grid reference (depending on the resolution) may encompass several streets in an urban area, which may be on completely different postal "runs".

a 10 digit number is accurate to 1 metre I belive.

Alun

Maskhadov wrote:

Galileo can guide delivery services to the house.

Really? How does what is effectively just a souped up GPS system achieve this?

a 10 digit number is accurate to 1 metre I belive.

True, but still not hierarchical. You'd have to maintain a whole list of 1m squares that corresponded to each postal delivery area for sorting purposes ... messy. And an arbitrary 10 digit number isn't that easily memorable.

EDIT: Not quite true ... it's 10 digits within a 100x100km square defined by a 'sheet' identifier (a single letter). A full 1m accurate reference would be a 12 digit number.

spacetweek

Alun wrote:

Really? How does what is effectively just a souped up GPS system achieve this?

True, but still not hierarchical. You'd have to maintain a whole list of 1m squares that corresponded to each postal delivery area for sorting purposes ... messy. And an arbitrary 10 digit number isn't that easily memorable.

I worked this out a while back and it's easy enough. Divide the island into a 4x5 grid and assign them letters (excluding I, O, Q, etc.) Each square is 100 x 100 km. Now follow with two 3-digit numbers, which is the number of 100 m units the square is divided into. This gives you a res of 100x100m on the ground. From a cursory glance at Google maps, I reckon in a rural area this covers at most 2 or 3 houses. In an urban area you fine tune by using the street number and name.

Or we could just name every single road in the country I lived in Australia for a time and this appears to be the case there. Although I know that Ireland has a much higher road density so maybe it wouldn't be practical here.

antoinolachtnai

You just label the roads. You can number the segments, it's very simple, can be done from a map.

If you use your a coordinate system as non-granular as you suggest, you will end up with two houses with the same postcode that are up to a mile or two away from each other by road in urban areas for sure. In extraurban areas, you would see something the same.

You still have the problem of creating a national register of addresses and assigning a code to each individual property or building. If you don't do that, the same property will potentially have 5 or 6 postcodes, which will just cause confusion.

Maskhadov

well..whatever they do.. they better not copy the system in northern ireland. its widly admitted that the postcode system is a diaster.

Alun

spacetweek wrote:

I worked this out a while back and it's easy enough. Divide the island into a 4x5 grid and assign them letters (excluding I, O, Q, etc.) Each square is 100 x 100 km. Now follow with two 3-digit numbers, which is the number of 100 m units the square is divided into. This gives you a res of 100x100m on the ground. From a cursory glance at Google maps, I reckon in a rural area this covers at most 2 or 3 houses.

This is already the Irish National Grid does it! The 10 digit map reference I quoted is within a 100x100km square, which are allocated letters, so a full 1m accurate grid reference would actually be either a 12 digit number, or a single letter, or sheet number, followed by a 10-digit number. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_national_grid_reference_system.

In an urban area you fine tune by using the street number and name.

Surely if we then have to introduce street names to the equation, with their potential for mis-spelling and ambiguity, this totally negates the whole point of a postal code system?

Systems like those in use in the UK and the Netherlands go down to street level, and only require the addition of the house number to make them unique.

Alun

Maskhadov wrote:

well..whatever they do.. they better not copy the system in northern ireland. its widly admitted that the postcode system is a diaster.

Is it? By whom? I've always found the system in the UK (not just NI!) to be pretty good for my use, and pretty easy to remember being a mixture of letters and numbers.

Maskhadov

the UK postcode system works well in england wales and scotland but is a diaster in northern ireland.

Alun

Maskhadov wrote:

the UK postcode system works well in england wales and scotland but is a diaster in northern ireland.

Again, why ????????? Links, references etc. What on earth is so unique about NI that makes the usage of UK style postcodes there a "disaster" ?

joolsveer

Is it true that all postcodes in Northern Ireland are based on Belfast? If so could this be a reason the codes may not work in the same way as in Britain.

I think the Dublin postal district numbering is often used to up the price of houses and it is not related to actual location - it is inclined to be elastic e.g. the housing estate in Ballyfermot that was being sold as being in Palmerstown. In my opinion it would be a great advance to have a postcode which defines the exact location of the address.

I live in Dublin 15 where half the people in the area think they live in Castleknock even those who live some 4 Km away. It must make live difficult for anyone trying to find an address.

Alun

joolsveer wrote:

Is it true that all postcodes in Northern Ireland are based on Belfast? If so could this be a reason the codes may not work in the same way as in Britain.

Yes they do, but that was an implementation decision by whoever decided to do it that way, not an inherent fault in the system itself, and doesn't detract from the usefulness of the postcode as a sorting or navigation aid. in fact you could argue that it's 2 fewer letters to remember

The number of two letter combinations at the start of the postcodes in England are pretty limited too, and are centred around large centres of population. NI just doesn't have many of these.

antoinolachtnai

Yes, in Ireland addresses transcend mere geography and attempt to convey to you something about the needs, hopes and desires of the occupant. Whilst this is very useful if you are trying to decide what to wear when you go to visit somebody, it's not much help when it comes to actually finding the house. I call this an 'aspirational' addressing system, as distinct from the first-generation 'geographic systems in use in other countries.

Postcodes in the UK are based around postal cities. Everything in the UK is, really, because it is basically an urban country, with a large proportion of the population living in cities larger than 100,000 people. The postal city for the whole of Norn Iron is Belfast, hence BT. There appear to be two reasons for this - the population of the North is quite small overall, and nobody really wanted to talk about what the code for the urban area situated on the River Foyle should be.

There are obviously cultural issues with this, but there are also practical issues. The UK postcode system didn't really lend itself all that well to structures of rural life in the North. The Post Office strongly encouraged local authorities to name all roads around the time postcodes were introduced. I think this was a mistake myself. It was certainly pretty unpopular, and the fact that NI was a land divided by strife probably didn't make the process any easier. I believe that people felt that the names had been imposed on them and sometimes the pattern didn't follow traditional naming in the area. Also, as I understand it, the coding was done on a different basis in some counties (such as Fermanagh) and this coding is quite hard to follow for the postman.

I wouldn't write off the Northern system completely though. There are big problems with it, but for the most part it is easier to find an address up there than it is down here.

kelzer

antoinolachtnai wrote:

Yes, in Ireland addresses transcend mere geography and attempt to convey to you something about the needs, hopes and desires of the occupant. Whilst this is very useful if you are trying to decide what to wear when you go to visit somebody, it's not much help when it comes to actually finding the house. I call this an 'aspirational' addressing system, as distinct from the first-generation 'geographic systems in use in other countries.

Postcodes in the UK are based around postal cities. Everything in the UK is, really, because it is basically an urban country, with a large proportion of the population living in cities larger than 100,000 people. The postal city for the whole of Norn Iron is Belfast, hence BT. There appear to be two reasons for this - the population of the North is quite small overall, and nobody really wanted to talk about what the code for the urban area situated on the River Foyle should be.

There are obviously cultural issues with this, but there are also practical issues. The UK postcode system didn't really lend itself all that well to structures of rural life in the North. The Post Office strongly encouraged local authorities to name all roads around the time postcodes were introduced. I think this was a mistake myself. It was certainly pretty unpopular, and the fact that NI was a land divided by strife probably didn't make the process any easier. I believe that people felt that the names had been imposed on them and sometimes the pattern didn't follow traditional naming in the area. Also, as I understand it, the coding was done on a different basis in some counties (such as Fermanagh) and this coding is quite hard to follow for the postman.

I wouldn't write off the Northern system completely though. There are big problems with it, but for the most part it is easier to find an address up there than it is down here.

yep I think you got it spot on there man. I live in NI and I remember ringing up an insurance company based in the UK. I gave them my home postcode in Tyrone and they said they dont quote for people living in Belfast. Explained the situation that all NI postcodes start with BT, but they didnt seem to care. Anyway for sure the postcode system up here isn't perfect but our letters would take much longer to deliver if we didnt have one.

MrPudding

kelzer wrote:

I gave them my home postcode in Tyrone and they said they dont quote for people living in Belfast. Explained the situation that all NI postcodes start with BT, but they didnt seem to care.

Most insurance companies will not touch NI at all, not just Belfast. Look at all the ads for directline etc. They all have "not available in Northern Ireland" at the bottom of the screen.

SHe may have been making a error when she said we don't do Belfast, most likely she should have said "we don't do Northern Ireland."

MrP

nordydan

MrPudding wrote:

Most insurance companies will not touch NI at all, not just Belfast. Look at all the ads for directline etc. They all have "not available in Northern Ireland" at the bottom of the screen.

SHe may have been making a error when she said we don't do Belfast, most likely she should have said "we don't do Northern Ireland."

MrP

Yes indeed, most do not cover the north or when you are applying online link you to another company based in NI. Others still add on about 30-40% for a BT postcode.

snickerpuss

joolsveer wrote:

I think the Dublin postal district numbering is often used to up the price of houses and it is not related to actual location - it is inclined to be elastic e.g. the housing estate in Ballyfermot that was being sold as being in Palmerstown. In my opinion it would be a great advance to have a postcode which defines the exact location of the address.
I live in Dublin 15 where half the people in the area think they live in Castleknock even those who live some 4 Km away. It must make live difficult for anyone trying to find an address.

Yeah this is happening more.
Some have been changed too, i live in Coolock which on most maps is Dublin 17 yet my street sign says Dublin 5.
I think most of North Dublin is Dublin 5 at this point.
That said i never have trouble getting post, even when its addressed to me 'as gaeilge'.

Victor

snickerpuss wrote:

Some have been changed too, i live in Coolock which on most maps is Dublin 17 yet my street sign says Dublin 5.

The Darndale end is D17 the rest is D5. I'm not sure where the line is.

fricatus

Interesting thread - seems to been dormant for ages - wouldn't have come across it only for the new infrastructure forum... so are they still planning on introducing postcodes in this country then, or has the idea gone off the boil?

antoinolachtnai

I think there is a consultants' report with the minister. There were some newspaper stories about it around September or so if you search back, I think.

Maskhadov

its 2008 i belive

Once the postcode format has been decided and codes allocated, it would be interesting to see how quickly Businesses, GPS system ( updated maps), Courier companies start to use them etc

I reckon that it may be several years before Joe Public uses them for personal mail.

antoinolachtnai

Well, there would have to be a campaign to drive it out. It would start with the big mailers (utilities, government) and work out to the smaller players. Most mail actually comes from the bigger mailers.

Victor

Yeah, but the big mailers will need to know what the small guy's post code is.

antoinolachtnai

For sure! But the big players will adopt first. Obviously there has to be a way of finding out a postcode for an address.

a.