National Postcodes to be introduced

Curly Judge · 26-07-2014 11:31pm

Anyone interested in this piece of governance should listen to this programme tomorrow morning.

http://www.todayfm.com/The-Sunday-Business-Show

Trouble up at mill, lad

a65b2cd · 27-07-2014 11:04am

Listened to this program - thanks for the link to it. The only input was from a spokesperson from the Freight Transport Association who had only one interest i.e. to have a postcode that could be directly converted to an X/Y location. He had no interest in postal delivery. He knew that the X/Y co-ordinates are available as an enhancement to the basic file but did not want to spend any more money for it. The interviewer had done no research and was limited to saying .... you have told me

Bizarre that such a high profile programme had done no prior research so as to be able to present a balanced view. Why didn’t they interview someone from Eircode?

Curly Judge · 27-07-2014 12:21pm

a65b2cd wrote: »

Listened to this program - thanks for the link to it. The only input was from a spokesperson from the Freight Transport Association who had only one interest i.e. to have a postcode that could be directly converted to an X/Y location. He had no interest in postal delivery. He knew that the X/Y co-ordinates are available as an enhancement to the basic file but did not want to spend any more money for it. The interviewer had done no research and was limited to saying .... you have told me

Bizarre that such a high profile programme had done no prior research so as to be able to present a balanced view. Why didn’t they interview someone from Eircode?

Well....Leo McDonald of the Freight Transport Association was speaking and he claims to represent 200 employers.
I thought he presented his case very well!
Why is nobody listening out there.
What we wanted/needed was a location code.
An Post neither wants or needs a post code.
But...that is what we are going to get.
It's like going into the greengrocers and asking for a bag of carrots and instead being offered a bag of parsnips.
Only an arrogant state body would have the chutzpah to pull a stunt like that!
And demand money for it .....

Impetus · 29-07-2014 8:29pm

Carawaystick wrote: »

Every road has a road number, it's just the L roads are generally badly publicised.
The letter for the road number is not needed, as National roads are 1 or 2 digits, Regional roads are 3 digits, local roads are 4 or 5.

Agreed. They don't use a prefix in Germany or Switzerland etc. However local roads have such a random number size (eg 4 to 6 digits), maybe they need the L prefix. Notwithstanding the fact that L road numbering is a total mess anyway.

Carawaystick wrote: »

SpaceTime has a great idea in the road/distance along it, method of postcode.

Agreed. This is the norm in many continental countries for rural addresses. However it is in the first line of the address - not in the postcode. eg 500 ave JG Branche, Le Trayas in France is 200 metres from 700 ave JG Branche. They both have the same postcode 83530 LE TRAYAS. If you give a complex postcode, the higher the chance of someone making a typo. And it is much more intuitively apparent to someone driving down ave JG Branche that if they are passing house number 234 that house number 734 is another half a km down the avenue.

Carawaystick wrote: »

It retains the existing address, and adds information if needed to find the address. The postcode can be figured out offline, without using gps.

absolutely.

Carawaystick wrote: »

It would depend on roads being labelled, with their road number, so someone can see *that* road is L12321 as they approach. I'd add a triangle shape at cross roads to indicate if the road distance increases or decreases(triangle up/down)

I presume you are referring to advance signposting. While I couldn't disagree, if the L road numbers were properly laid out eg L2000 was followed by 2001, it would be less necessary. As it stands at the present, L numbers are almost totally random, because some idiot decided to space out the numbering "plan" into "primary" and "secondary" L roads. Needless and confusing. In the same way as they probably same INCOMPETENT IDIOTS who do not deserve a job (or a pension) want to make the last four characters of the current, over-priced, heavy maintenance "Eircode" non-system random. These people get paid a high salary and pension, and then outsource their work to the highest bidder.

Carawaystick wrote: »

I'd also be in favour of labelling Townlands too. I know in parts of Galway, they have the townland name inscribed on a stone as you enter it. Not so much as a postcode or location thing, but to mark our heritage.

You can do that if you wish. But it is more decorative and than functional. The sign says "Ballymuck". You open the car window and ask some "local" who probably arrived a week ago from Slovakia, and chances are they don't know. Big deal, you are now in Ballymuck - but where is 200 Ballymuck Road East? It is more important to sign each road. Which is why I thought of 200 ROUTE L2345, because most of these routes are already signed.

But I suspect I am *issing into the wind here. Ireland seems to prefer dysfunctional, over-decoration, gilding the lilley, and would prefer a dogs dinner of re-inventing the wheel, with added randomness to further confuse people, with all the difficulty that this burdens delivery vans, visitors and misc logistical systems just to be pig pigheadedly different to the rest of Europe, rather than replicating clearly thought out Northern and Central European standards and applying them to the Irish environment.

I am advocating a system that provides for local history (eg using townland names as part of the road name), giving each rural building a metric number (so you can find it without a GPS - most GPS software is of very low quality anyway - often leading one into needless trips along routes which are neither the shortest or fastest route to the destination). Aside from the fact that the Eircode will take up much/most of the memory of a typical GPS - which makes it a non-runner anyway.

29-07-2014 11:47pm

FYI L roads numbering is repeated county by county so there is every possibility that there are 26 L1001's in the country and so on

Sad but true

30-07-2014 7:17am

Deleted User wrote: »

FYI L roads numbering is repeated county by county so there is every possibility that there are 26 L1001's in the country and so on

Sad but true

Silly question, does that mean that where an L road crosses a county boundary, does it change number?

Curly Judge · 30-07-2014 7:47am

Deleted User wrote: »

Silly question, does that mean that where an L road crosses a county boundary, does it change number?

Good question!
And does it have a different number signposted at either end?

chewed · 30-07-2014 10:02am

Curly Judge wrote: »

Good question!
And does it have a different number signposted at either end?

Impetus · 30-07-2014 6:23pm

Deleted User wrote: »

FYI L roads numbering is repeated county by county so there is every possibility that there are 26 L1001's in the country and so on

Sad but true

It does not matter if L road numbering space is repeated in different counties. It is the same in France with D road numbers. So long as one has a simple postcode to define the postal district (which is a far smaller entity than a county), it is irrelevant.

As an aside, assuming you are correct in what you say about L code repetition - why do they need such long numbers? eg L2345 is bad enough at a "county level" - but L92832 is bonkers.

Impetus · 30-07-2014 7:06pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Silly question, does that mean that where an L road crosses a county boundary, does it change number?

It doesn't really matter. Counties play no part in modern postal sorting systems. Logistics is about nodes - ie precise points. A sorting centre almost invariably sorts mail for addresses which are in numerous counties. An Post has only four sorting centres in the entire country. Other logistical companies typically have a similar number of locations, at the most. Logistics is not about tracts of land that might be up to 7,500 km2, as in the case of Cork Co. The road name is a road identifier. It just needs to be unique to a postal district, to eliminate confusion/duplication.

400 ROUTE L2525 might be on the border between two counties - so what. Or most of the road might be in a different county. It makes no difference. Any person who has to deal with the real world of building addresses - eg a courier, van driver, postman, whatever, does not stop at the county boundary, and say not my job to go any further.

In the same way as identical phone numbers can be replicated across several NDCs (area codes).

When entering an address on an online / web based rapid address entry system, the first thing one enters is the postcode. This causes the system to auto-fill as many elements of the address as possible, and create a sieve to limit the range of other address elements that one can enter to ones that are valid within that postcode. So entering a postcode might auto-fill the town name. Entering the first few characters of the road would auto-fill or provide a drop down list of a few options of road names, where more than one existed. All that remains to be entered is the building number.

If you were living in Cavan or wherever, and ordered a PC from say Dell, and it did not arrive as expected - I don't think you would be too pleased if when you called Dell Customer Service, they told you that their courier company dropped it just inside the Cavan border on 25.07.2014 at 11:32 - and attached a photograph of the guy leaving the package on the N3 at 53.774333, -7.000579 grid reference, as proof of delivery. Ireland is obsessed with counties, and while they may have a lot of relevance in terms of culture, sporting etc, they have nothing to do with a modern address structure. No more than baronies etc some of which date back to pre-Norman times.

30-07-2014 8:21pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Silly question, does that mean that where an L road crosses a county boundary, does it change number?

It can yes

30-07-2014 8:31pm

Impetus wrote: »

As an aside, assuming you are correct in what you say about L code repetition - why do they need such long numbers? eg L2345 is bad enough at a "county level" - but L92832 is bonkers.

L9283 would, in most cases, be the local secondary, L92832, which might also be signposted as L9283-2, is, again in most cases, the local tertiary road which is a dead end or for local access only (bog Road, boreen, etc) and is a side road off L9283.

Also, L92831, L92832, L92833 and so on can often be sections of the same road, just broken into sections at the boundary line of townland.

On a side note, the poor system of management for L road numbering is the main reason I've stopped actively seeking out and mapping these Road ref's on OpenStreetMap, they are of little use to anyone except councils in their current state

Impetus · 30-07-2014 9:39pm

Deleted User wrote: »

L9283 would, in most cases, be the local secondary, L92832, which might also be signposted as L9283-2, is, again in most cases, the local tertiary road which is a dead end or for local access only (bog Road, boreen, etc) and is a side road off L9283.

Also, L92831, L92832, L92833 and so on can often be sections of the same road, just broken into sections at the boundary line of townland.

On a side note, the poor system of management for L road numbering is the main reason I've stopped actively seeking out and mapping these Road ref's on OpenStreetMap, they are of little use to anyone except councils in their current state

Basically they (L-) are as clear as mud. I wonder if they are of much use even to local authorities?

The pre-cursor in Irish bureaucratic "design" terms to the Eircode. Make it as dumb, and as useless and random as possible, and as embarrassingly stupid and confusing your mind can imagine.

Maximise your pension - get five (*****) "messed-up thinking", ejit stars engraved on your gold retirement watch, by making life as dysfunctional as possible, for the public for your role in presiding over the "eircode" - whoever you are, Mr brain-dead nameless "public servant".

wreckless · 30-07-2014 10:23pm

listen to this man, he knows his stuff and what should be done.

Midwest Radio with Tommy Marren on the major issues with the planned new National postcode

The interview is at minute 18:50 here: http://midwest.radica.com/talk/mwrtalk.mp3

Curly Judge · 01-08-2014 12:27am

Interesting statement from the Freight Transport Association.

http://www.ftai.ie/policy_and_compliance/

I think the wheels are coming off this thing as we speak!

ozmo · 01-08-2014 12:51am

Curly Judge wrote: »

Interesting statement from the Freight Transport Association.

http://www.ftai.ie/policy_and_compliance/

I think the wheels are coming off this thing as we speak!

Some interesting information in there.

So according to that and previous sources listed here - there will be Two Packages you can buy.

1. A standard data file - All houses (With No Long Lat locations) - 5,000 euros (per year?) licence.

2. A location enabled database - Which includes the GPS locations - cost not specified. This may be online only, not specified.

Option (1) is completely useless as far I can can see as it wont locate a house.

Still No plans known on how it will work for offline Android/IPhone/Garmin/Tomtom apps.

NinetyForNone · 01-08-2014 9:23am

wreckless wrote: »

listen to this man, he knows his stuff and what should be done.

Midwest Radio with Tommy Marren on the major issues with the planned new National postcode

The interview is at minute 18:50 here: midwest.radica.com/talk/mwrtalk.mp3

Do you know when the interview was aired? That mp3 gets replaced every day.

Tow · 01-08-2014 9:30am

It is per a year subscription. Capita have the contract (€25M) for the next 10 years. Maybe when it ends the government will get their act together and implement a proper system. After all, it is not as if they had a lack of good suggestions for different systems over the years.

The current system will only become any sort of success if the database becomes free. That still leaves the problems that an Eircode is useless without the database, as it can only pinpoint to one of 139 'post towns' and has no check digit validation. Plus, the database will be to large (and expensive) to implement in many GPS systems.

larchill · 01-08-2014 11:37pm

See the link below for details of GeoDirectorys pricing:

https://www.geodirectory.ie/Geodirectory/media/Geodirectory/Documents/GeoAddress-Locator-Pricing-Schedule-November-2013.pdf

@ this rate of going eircode will be an abject failure If its linked to GeoDirectory. This will be especially so if the pricing is anything like here :eek:

Impetus · 02-08-2014 9:46am

Curly Judge wrote: »

Interesting statement from the Freight Transport Association.

http://www.ftai.ie/policy_and_compliance/

I think the wheels are coming off this thing as we speak!

While the Freight Transport Association clearly highlighted that the Eircode gets almost "nul points" in terms of meeting the objectives of the Joint Oireachtas Communications Committee report on postcodes, the Association missed out on the fundamental question as I see it. It completely glosses over the basic need to give each building a unique number on a named street/road.

How else can freight transport operators manage to deliver goods efficiently? Plan their loads etc. Without local knowledge, and if the person who has that knowledge leaves a company, the new person will encounter a long learning curve.

Secondly this is just a pdf posted to their website. What action to they propose to take to get the matter fixed? As they say postcodes are sticky, and will be with a country for a century or more.

Impetus · 02-08-2014 9:54am

It also occurs to me that the issue is against the objectives of a Single European Market.

While it is an easy matter for an Irish truck driver to deliver goods in Germany where every road has a name and every building a number.

And the German postcodes are simple and everybody uses them, and they are memorable, the reverse is not true (ie the German delivering something to an address in Ireland).

The mushy as a bog state of Irish addressing, and the deliberately complex randomized nature of the proposed postcode are anti-competitive.

This mushy bog will not be fixed by spraying some fertilizer over it to promote the growth of plants. The plants will just grow bigger and make it harder to see.

Curly Judge · 02-08-2014 10:06am

The word on the street is that TomTom are about to announce a new system for Ireland that ignores the proposed postal code system.
So, the hauliers don't like it, Garmin has already plumped for Loc8 and now TomTom have indicated [or are about to] that they are not interested.
I can see the whole enterprise having about as much relevance as our famous National Spatial Strategy.

Impetus · 02-08-2014 10:22am

Looking at the price list for Geodirectory, and the proposed structure of the “Eircode” they are both extremely and needlessly complex. Complexity leads to cost (for all participants) and usually generates a poor success rate. Most Irish (and other) government projects end up being extremely complex – because they are devised by committees.

Compare and contrast this complexity with the seed venture capital company “Y-combinator”. Come to them with a business idea, and if they decide to run with it, they will give you $120,000 for a 7% stake in your company. No more, no less.

Any aspiring entrepreneur can look at giving away 7% of their company’s shares to receive $120,000 funding and say to themselves “I can live with that”. It eliminates waste of time and allows the focus to be on the new business idea.

Y-Combinator have seed funded more businesses than virtually any other organisation. These include DropBox, AirBnB, Reddit, Scribd, Stripe, etc – see their website. They have simple principles – build a community of entrepreneurs, work from your home – (not some “incubator”), etc. They have funded 700 startups since 2005, of which only about 100 have failed which is an incredible success rate.

Is it too much to ask that Ireland adopts some “Y-combinator” simplicity and intelligent approach to getting the job done, and re-visits the task given to Capita. Capita should instead, in my view, be assigning metric road addresses to the 50% of the buildings that have no proper address. Overlay that with a simple postcode that points to the approximately 160 postal zones in the country (ie 139 towns + large city postal districts). In a manner that makes obvious sense and everybody can buy into? As in the 6000 area is “Greater Limerick and surrounding counties”, 2000 is Cork, 5000 is the South East etc. 5000 = Waterford city perhaps, 5300 = Wexford perhaps, etc.

http://www.ycombinator.com (website)

An interesting discussion with Sam Altman one of the Y-Combinator founders was published (link below) on 28.07.2014.

http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2014/Altmanstartups.mp3

Impetus · 02-08-2014 10:31am

Curly Judge wrote: »

The word on the street is that TomTom are about to announce a new system for Ireland that ignores the proposed postal code system.

I can see the whole enterprise having about as much relevance as our famous National Spatial Strategy.

If this is true, it makes the murky screwed up state of Irish addressing even more screwed up. When they privatized the phone system, they did not force the customer to get a new phone number if they decided to move to a new supplier. When they privatized electricity generation, customers weren't forced to have new power cables installed into their premises.

Why have more than one "system" to point to each building?

It is somewhat like the Irish joke about the tourist asking for directions in a remote place, to which the local's response was "If I were you I wouldn't start from here" The same response should be given to the people at Capita.

starlit · 02-08-2014 10:45am

Have they not introduced this yet? Would the code for each sections of an ordnance survey map like it is for the collins maps such as 71 for Kerry not be more appropriate?

If they have to up the price of stamps surely they could introduce this by now a proper postcode system or are they looking into PO box codes?

Impetus · 02-08-2014 11:22am

doovdela wrote: »

Have they not introduced this yet? Would the code for each sections of an ordnance survey map like it is for the collins maps such as 71 for Kerry not be more appropriate?

A postcode, town and street address combination point to a delivery objective which meets the requirement of the shipper, delivery agent and customer. I don't know the specifics of the "collins maps" code - but I suspect it just described a block of space. Many counties have bordering towns which are best served from a node in a neighbouring county.

Eg the telephone "exchange" serving Youghal in Co Cork is physically located in Dungarvan (WD). They have different area codes assigned to the numbers (024 and 058), but that is a reflection of the flexibility of IT based systems. So it is not wise logistically to bring counties (or grid squares) into a postcode system.

The German town of DE-78266 Büsingen is logistically in Switzerland - even down to the VAT rate - because of the geographic nature of the locale, borders etc. And of course the residents of the town like the fact that they pay Swiss 8% VAT (rather than 19% German rate). The Swiss police arrest people in this German town, and if the German police visit this part of Germany, they have to do so via Swiss roads, where they are powerless.

doovdela wrote: »

If they have to up the price of stamps surely they could introduce this by now a proper postcode system or are they looking into PO box codes?

Postage rates etc is a phase II issue. They first get the system in place and achieve general acceptance of it. The task of putting up the price becomes far easier after the establishment phase is over!

SPDUB · 02-08-2014 2:01pm

Impetus wrote: »

Postage rates etc is a phase II issue. They first get the system in place and achieve general acceptance of it. The task of putting up the price becomes far easier after the establishment phase is over!

Or An Post actually put up prices on 21st July 2014 with it having nothing to do with Eircode

recedite · 02-08-2014 6:07pm

Curly Judge wrote: »

Interesting statement from the Freight Transport Association.

http://www.ftai.ie/policy_and_compliance/

I think the wheels are coming off this thing as we speak!

IMO that is a really excellent 8-point summary of eircode, and how it measures up to (and fails to meet) the original requirements.

The only part missing is how Capita managed to win the tender with such a dismal offering.

Impetus · 02-08-2014 7:19pm

recedite wrote: »

The only part missing is how Capita managed to win the tender with such a dismal offering.

Was Capita's offer to be a service provider in terms of rolling out and running a postcode system, or to design it?

I only ask this question because I had several interactions with the gov / ministers responsible at the time, and the message one received (reading between the lines) was the design of the code was being driven by government requirements - especially CSO requirements. And this seems to me to be confirmed by the "end result" so far. It is purely designed for the benefit of statisticians and other government officials who have free access to the database of Eircodes etc. Two fingers to the rest of the country - ie the people paying these peoples' salary etc.

A postcode should be deigned to be universally useful and understandable and accessible to the entire population - consumer and business.

And a postcode is only part of the address structure. eg walking / driving down a street to visit someone who you haven't visited before, you don't really care if they live at D08 2GVW. It is helpful if they live at number 85 and you have just gone by number 23. And the same thing applies in a rural townland scenario, if each building was numbered and given a road name.

Postcodes, town names, street names and building numbers are the four basic components of address-ability and find-ability. It is a universal requirement, and can only be overcome in Ireland by local knowledge.

The entire country can't be run on local knowledge - a situation that may have been acceptable before the car was invented and most people didn't travel more than 20km beyond their birth place. This is no longer the case, and it is time that the addressing system was updated (and not just the introduction of postcodes in isolation - leaving a crap address non-system). And given clear, simple and accurate addresses (road, building number and town), you don't need a lot of postcodes or postcode complexity or randomness. Well designed postcodes are great for marketing, business planning (where do we put our next store), finding a supplier in your postcode area, etc etc. But a postcode should only define a zone of land around its local market town or village or city suburb.

The complex postcode used in Britain was designed in the 1960s when computer technology was in its infancy and mail had to be sorted using a postcode. This was state of the art in its day.

It is pointless replicating this now, and making it even more high resolution by giving a separate code to each house. In Britain an average of 25 houses share the same code. Sorting by postcode is not done in most countries including Ireland. The sorting system can scan the entire address and come up with the delivery co-ordinates in terms of latitude and longitude and sequence a bundle of envelopes in the order required for the post person to walk down a street and deliver each item from the top of their bundle.

While I have not looked at the details of the tendering process (assumption) that Capita was engaged in (probably because it was not well published), it seems to me that there is a pungent odour of two fingers to the business and consumer user of addresses and the CSO and their colleagues in government have been allowed by the several ministers of government of the day to "do their own thing" - and to hell with the public / business requirements.

recedite · 02-08-2014 8:13pm

The tendering process was somewhat "incestuous" in that some of the persons/entities involved in drawing it up were also involved in the foreign based consortium that eventually won it.
And some of the persons/entities that might have produced a better proposal, and were based here in Ireland, were excluded by a bizarre requirement to have an existing financial turnover of several million euro (I can't remember the exact figure offhand) The usefulness or significance of this onerous restriction was never explained.

National Postcodes to be introduced

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