Eircode Routing Keys

OssianSmyth

I've compiled a list of Eircode routing keys along with corresponding towns.

I have 131 so far. Eircode say that there are 139 in total - so it would be great if you could look at the list and see if your routing key is one of the missing 8.

http://www.ossiansmyth.ie/eircode-routing-keys/

Note that routing keys sometimes cross county boundaries.

I notice that routing keys do not seem to be evenly spread based on population. Rush Lusk, Malahide, Balbriggan and Skerries each have their own routing key while Limerick city and county is mostly covered by one key with a population of about 80K.

Is this a sign of projected future population growth?

Also I notice that the random, 4-character element of the eircode is not that random. There are 390K possible combinations less 130K inappropriate words. So that's 260K choices. However the final four characters of my eircode "XN50" is also a valid eircode in the first 4 other routing keys that I tried. mmm...

a65b2cd

You seem to be missing: A42, A45, F56, P31, P32, T34, V31, AND X42

expectationlost

heres a crowdsourced map of the routing keys https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=zrmXDfjvem7g.k2eSAnvagEdQ partly based on above

plodder

OssianSmyth wrote: »

I've compiled a list of Eircode routing keys along with corresponding towns.

I have 131 so far. Eircode say that there are 139 in total - so it would be great if you could look at the list and see if your routing key is one of the missing 8.

http://www.ossiansmyth.ie/eircode-routing-keys/

Note that routing keys sometimes cross county boundaries.

I notice that routing keys do not seem to be evenly spread based on population. Rush Lusk, Malahide, Balbriggan and Skerries each have their own routing key while Limerick city and county is mostly covered by one key with a population of about 80K.

Is this a sign of projected future population growth?

Also I notice that the random, 4-character element of the eircode is not that random. There are 390K possible combinations less 130K inappropriate words. So that's 260K choices. However the final four characters of my eircode "XN50" is also a valid eircode in the first 4 other routing keys that I tried. mmm...

No, I don't think so

plodder

Good first attempt at a mapping. Getting the actual boundaries will require a bit more work though. You are right there is a huge variation in area size. The areas reflect An Post's delivery structure. So, there isn't necessarily an obvious justification for all of them.

expectationlost

plodder wrote: »

Good first attempt at a mapping. Getting the actual boundaries will require a bit more work though. You are right there is a huge variation in area size. The areas reflect An Post's delivery structure. So, there isn't necessarily an obvious justification for all of them.

so why isnt' there a map already of An Post postal towns (or presort codes and subareas) ?

marmurr1916

a65b2cd wrote: »

You seem to be missing: A42, A45, F56, P31, P32, T34, V31, AND X42

P31 is centered on Ballincollig in Co. Cork (just west of Cork city), P32 is part of north-west Co. Cork, between Cork city and Millstreet (Rylane is marked with P32 on the map above), T34 is rural areas and villages (including Whitechurch and Carrignavar) a few miles north of Cork city.

Cork towns:

Ballincollig - P31

Bandon - P72

Bantry - P75

Blarney - see Cork City (northside)

Carrigaline - P43

Carrignavar - T34

Charleville - P56

Clonakilty - P85

Cobh - P24

Cork City (northside) - T23

Cork City (southside) - T12

Dunmanway - P47

Fermoy - P61

Glanmire - T45

Kanturk - P51 (also Mallow, Millstreet)

Kinsale - P17

Macroom - P12

Mallow - see Kanturk

Midleton - P25

Millstreet - see Kanturk

Mitchelstown - P67

Monkstown - see Cork City (southside)

Passage West - see Cork City (southside)

Rylane - P32

Skibbereen - P81

Watergrasshill - T56

Youghal - P36

expectationlost

marmurr1916 wrote: »

P31 is centered on Ballincollig in Co. Cork (just west of Cork city).

oh great think the map has atleast one of all of the keys


15 large letter areas

Monasterevin W32 is surrounder by R's

marmurr1916

expectationlost wrote: »

oh great think the map has atleast one of all of the keys


15 large letter area

Monasterevin W32 is surrounder by R's

I still can't find P14 for Co. Cork - listed here:

http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/dber/domesticbuildingenergyratingsquarter22015/#.VaXCw_lVikr

D.L.R.

These routing keys seem to have been pulled out of someone's arse.. no order, no sequence, no logic.

The "A" zone is split in two ffs, from Wicklow to Monaghan. What the actual f**k?

With only 130 routing codes, building in some intuitive regional logic should have been easy.

For some inexplicable reason, they've chosen not to do that.

So messy and illogical, very frustrating.

plodder

expectationlost wrote: »

so why isnt' there a map already of An Post postal towns (or presort codes and subareas) ?

I'd say such a map exists, but they don't want to publish it, as it opens the whole can of worms about the structure of the code. They want people to treat eircodes as simple identifiers with no visible structure. To do anything useful with them, they want you to license their products.

The backers of loc8 (the FTAI) have said they will produce a map in conjunction with someone who has access to the Eircode database.

plodder

D.L.R. wrote: »

These routing keys seem to have been pulled out of someone's arse.. no order, no sequence, no logic.

The "A" zone is split in two ffs, from Wicklow to Monaghan. What the actual f**k?

With only 130 routing codes, building in some intuitive regional logic should have been easy.

For some inexplicable reason, they've chosen not to do that.

So messy and illogical, very frustrating.

They explain their reasoning in a design document that was never officially published and therefore no chance for the public to have any input to it.

Someone uploaded a copy of it here

http://www.docdroid.net/soI9zRx/nps-design-report-v4-redacted.pdf.html

fxotoole

I think the Naas sorting centre is W23, since W23 seems to be the first three digits of the eircode for most of North Kildare

fxotoole

D.L.R. wrote: »

These routing keys seem to have been pulled out of someone's arse.. no order, no sequence, no logic.

The "A" zone is split in two ffs, from Wicklow to Monaghan. What the actual f**k?

With only 130 routing codes, building in some intuitive regional logic should have been easy.

For some inexplicable reason, they've chosen not to do that.

So messy and illogical, very frustrating.

The keys are probably based on the existing infrastructure of sorting offices that are already in place.

OssianSmyth

Thanks to everyone who helped - I now have all 139 routing keys with at least one town in each. I am not going to map them manually - I'll wait until I can get a file to do the job with a script.

http://www.ossiansmyth.ie/eircode-routing-keys/

marmurr1916 wrote: »

I still can't find P14 for Co. Cork - listed here:

http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/dber/domesticbuildingenergyratingsquarter22015/#.VaXCw_lVikr

Crookstown

moyners

An Post have a map of their delivery zones for people wanting to deliver promotional mail. There's more of these than eircode routing codes so I'm guessing some of them are amalgamated but it gives you an idea of how crazy some of the areas are:
https://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/AnPostDM/ProductsAndServices/Publicity+Post/Instant+Quote/Publicity+Post+Map.htm

OssianSmyth

moyners wrote: »

An Post have a map of their delivery zones for people wanting to deliver promotional mail. There's more of these than eircode routing codes so I'm guessing some of them are amalgamated but it gives you an idea of how crazy some of the areas are:
https://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/AnPostDM/ProductsAndServices/Publicity+Post/Instant+Quote/Publicity+Post+Map.htm

I think you're right. Some of the routing key borders certainly match parts of these an post division maps.

moyners

OssianSmyth wrote: »

I think you're right. Some of the routing key borders certainly match parts of these an post division maps.

T12, Cork south city also includes all the areas down the N71 as far as Innashannon so Waterfall, Halfway, Ballinhassig, the Airport (and Business Park) and those areas.

OssianSmyth

The three-character routing key allowed for 25^3 combinations or 15,625 areas. But eircode chose just 139.

Smaller areas would have been more useful. We now have H91 - an area with 70K people stretching from Ballyvaughan in Clare around to Spiddal in West Galway. These towns are 65km apart and located in separate provinces.

plodder

OssianSmyth wrote: »

The three-character routing key allowed for 25^3 combinations or 15,625 areas. But eircode chose just 139.

Smaller areas would have been more useful. We now have H91 - an area with 70K people stretching from Ballyvaughan in Clare around to Spiddal in West Galway. These towns are 65km apart and located in separate provinces.

and the areas in rural North Dublin are small, population no more than couple of thousand if even that.

OssianSmyth

plodder wrote: »

and the areas in rural North Dublin are small, population no more than couple of thousand if even that.

it's less than that.

areas with number of dwellings in each:
A41 394
A42 857
A45 496

loyatemu

Why did they follow the An Post routing scheme when An Post already have their own scheme and have said they will continue using it regardless of Eircode?

plodder

loyatemu wrote: »

Why did they follow the An Post routing scheme when An Post already have their own scheme and have said they will continue using it regardless of Eircode?

Because if the whole thing didn't have the "moral support" of An Post, it was thought people wouldn't use it given that it's supposed to be a postcode. But, in reality what was needed was, a location code, and a unique identifier, not particularly a postcode. Crazy situation.

OssianSmyth

"There are approx 2,000 An Post post towns. An Post identified a subset of 139 to be used by Eircode that are future proofed...
It's a hierarchy. 4 main centres at the top, then 139 principle post towns, then 2,000 post towns. An Post would be best to explain"

https://twitter.com/autoaddress/status/607158063313895424

my3cents

If anyone is still looking for them X42 Goes with the Kilmacthomas Co. Waterford delivery addresses.

Victor

moyners wrote: »

An Post have a map of their delivery zones for people wanting to deliver promotional mail. There's more of these than eircode routing codes so I'm guessing some of them are amalgamated but it gives you an idea of how crazy some of the areas are:
https://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/AnPostDM/ProductsAndServices/Publicity+Post/Instant+Quote/Publicity+Post+Map.htm

Some of that is, er, novel.

GerardKeating

OssianSmyth wrote: »

The three-character routing key allowed for 25^3 combinations or 15,625 areas. But eircode chose just 139.

Smaller areas would have been more useful. We now have H91 - an area with 70K people stretching from Ballyvaughan in Clare around to Spiddal in West Galway. These towns are 65km apart and located in separate provinces.

H91 goes further than An Spidéal, out to at least Ros A Mhi, or further

murphaph

moyners wrote: »

An Post have a map of their delivery zones for people wanting to deliver promotional mail. There's more of these than eircode routing codes so I'm guessing some of them are amalgamated but it gives you an idea of how crazy some of the areas are:
https://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/AnPostDM/ProductsAndServices/Publicity+Post/Instant+Quote/Publicity+Post+Map.htm

That's a real eye opener, thanks, and explains why places like Newcastle, Co. Dublin now have a D22 XXXX Eircode (and thereby will invariably be seen as less desirable). Same goes for Rathcoole (now apparently part of D24 and Portmarnock and Howth, now apparently part of D13. I expect there to be some backlash, especially from Howth/Portmarnock property owners.

It's so crazy there is an ENCLAVE in the An Post delivery areas!! If you look at Lucan (around Fonthill) you'll see that there's an enclave of LN1 totally surrounded by LN2. I strongly suspect this is a result of the time Liam Lawlor meddled with the system to remove lands he had an interest in from D22 an transfer them to Lucan, County Dublin. It seems terribly unfair that property owners in places like Portmarnock, Howth, Newcastle and Rathcoole/Saggart now have to suffer these transfers to what are obviously less desirable Dublin postal districts, while properties that should have been in D22 all along get neutral Eircodes.

threeiron

murphaph wrote: »

I expect there to be some backlash, especially from Howth/Portmarnock property owners.

I think the Eircode will actually enable households to write their actual geographical address without any penalty of the post arriving a day late - because An Post will use the Eircode to route it correctly. This is one of the unforeseen benefits of Eircodes.

alias no.9

P51 seems to stretch from Kerry (Rathmore) through north Cork to Waterford (Cappoquin) along the Blackwater but is bisected by the M8 corridor at Fermoy which is P61

Victor

During the week, I had a niggling feeling that a lot of the routings were down to how mail trains (the last such trains were withdrawn about 15 years ago) operated - each train station in North County Dublin has it's own code, etc. Not only were routings important, but with post and trains, time of day is also important - certain parts of the network would have more than one mail train per day, therefore, certain post would be prioritised.

I've just twigged why parts of Wicklow are associated with the North East - telephone codes, which were in turn somewhat based on telephone exchange routings, which were originally based on telegraph routings, which were based on railway lines (slightly different from train routes).

In recent years, there has been some amalgamation of telephone area codes. Note that the telephone code boundaries aren't precise.