Tiger Geocoder can't handle SH for state highway

[arencambre]

Tiger Geocoder gives no results for either of these queries:

SELECT ST_AsEWKT(geomout) FROM geocode_intersection('SH 121', 'Denton Tap', 'TX', 'Coppell') ORDER BY rating ASC LIMIT 1;
SELECT ST_AsEWKT(geomout) FROM geocode_intersection('SH121', 'Denton Tap', 'TX', 'Coppell') ORDER BY rating ASC LIMIT 1;

I can get it to work by converting to this:

SELECT ST_AsEWKT(geomout) FROM geocode_intersection('State Highway 121', 'Denton Tap', 'TX', 'Coppell') ORDER BY rating ASC LIMIT 1;

The problem is, in the Tiger database, the highway is known as State Highway 121, but the geocoder doesn't understand that SH is a common abbreviation for State Highway. See http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/attachment/ticket/1392/intersection.png.

[arencambre]

Does the geocoder understand other common abbreviations? E.g., TX is also commonly used as an abbreviation for state highways in Texas. E.g., TX 121.

[robe]

Aren,

I forget if we handle the state abbreviation case or not. As for as street types go, if you look in the tiger.street_type_lookup, all the ones with is_hw are the ones it treats as highway prefixes and you are right I don't see SH in there.

Try adding it to that table and see if it fixes your issue and if it does I'll add it if it doesn't cause any issue elsewhere.

[arencambre]

OK, this worked for SH 121:

• SH in name column
• State Hwy in abbrev column
• TRUE (per pgAdmin III) in is_hw column

However, SH121 (without the space) still doesn't work, although if I check that on Google Maps (​link), it finds it but recommends SH 121 (with the space).

[robe]

I think this is now just the same issue as the I- 95 verses I-95 we have listed in another ticket.

[robe]

I haven't tested if this is an issue with pagc or not but won't have time to before release probably and might be more of an issue with handling variations in core geocoder itself. So moving back to tiger geocoder core.

[robe]

Milestone renamed