Dear Railway Neighbour.... What3Words

[alxndr]

That is incorrect, post codes are specific to one street and one street only. In my case, our post code only applies to half the street we live on.

A far cry from a wide area. I have no idea where you got that impression. Perhaps you are confused with American zip codes which are as you desribe?

Where there are houses, but if there aren't houses you can end up a fair distance from where you need to be. For example, the nearest postcode to Thingley MOD yard is SN14 0RW and this is the one given out in the "official" Hazard Directory, but if you put this into Google maps you end up outside the traveller settlement on Saltersford Lane. Or the next access on the WEY line, postcode SN15 2NG which takes you half a mile down the road. These are fairly good postcodes, there are far worse the further out you get into the countryside.

Even in a town my own postcode is useless for deliveries. My "street" isn't a street, it's a footpath. Most mapping software directs people to a different road that's through a maze of houses to get to my door, but if you use a different postcode you can park alongside the house. Fine if it is just a delivery, but not so good if someone's trying to find you in an emergency.

 

[Snow1964]

How many people do you think are capable of giving a grid reference to the nearest 100m?

It was taught in first year of secondary school, part of geography subject, when I was at school (started secondary school in 1976), still remember the beef rule (topside, read digits at top before those at side).

So unless it has been dropped in recent years, a large proportion of population should know it, and I suspect t the older generation who did national service or war work know it too.

Especially without a map. I'm not sure there is a free app that will give me a postcode or OSGB grid reference just based on GPS location.

Not many people without a smartphone (and who have bothered to download the app) would be able to give a W3W words location.

There are a couple of notices in my local town with the 3 words, both located near defibrillators, so presumably alternative in an emergency is find a defibrillator and search out the notice next to it for location

 

[XAM2175]

There were rumours/reports that postcodes had been allocated to some isolated car parks, with no actual delivery addresses. The suggested purpose being to help ambulances, with postcode based navigation, meet up with injured hill walkers and the like.

Don't get me wrong; this is entirely possible - but it's not something that Royal Mail is obliged to do or even consider doing.

Where there are houses, but if there aren't houses you can end up a fair distance from where you need to be. For example, the nearest postcode to Thingley MOD yard is SN14 0RW and this is the one given out in the "official" Hazard Directory, but if you put this into Google maps you end up outside the traveller settlement on Saltersford Lane. Or the next access on the WEY line, postcode SN15 2NG which takes you half a mile down the road. These are fairly good postcodes, there are far worse the further out you get into the countryside.

Even in a town my own postcode is useless for deliveries. My "street" isn't a street, it's a footpath. Most mapping software directs people to a different road that's through a maze of houses to get to my door, but if you use a different postcode you can park alongside the house. Fine if it is just a delivery, but not so good if someone's trying to find you in an emergency.

It's very important to note that the ordinary postcode (like SN14 0RW) doesn't actually have a single physical location. That's only possible where the postcode is specific to one particular address, like SW1A 1AA for Buckingham Palace and Buckingham Palace only. Royal Mail themselves actually have extended version of the postcode that they use internally, which adds three more characters called the Delivery Point Suffix onto the end of the "public" postcode and uniquely identifies every single different address, but this is only available under commercial licence and to the best of my knowledge even then the physical co-ordinates of the delivery point are only approximate.

What you're actually seeing when most mapping services show you a single "pinpoint" for a postcode is a rough guess based on the median co-ordinates of all the known addresses covered by the postcode. The Ordinance Survey publish this freely under the Open Government Licence in their Code-Point Open dataset. Obviously in urban areas this will still be reasonably accurate, but as you get to postcode areas that cover large tracts of of land it quickly falls over for the purposes of finding a specific location on the ground.

That said, on the point of Google Maps specifically, I believe they have recently been rolling-out an upgraded postcode engine that attempts to show the rough area bounded by the postcode rather than just the median co-ordinates. This is what I get now for SN14 0RW when searching on my desktop:

So unless it has been dropped in recent years, a large proportion of population should know it, and I suspect t the older generation who did national service or war work know it too.

Though this presupposes that they have access to a map marked with the OSGB grid in the first place.

 

[alxndr]

That said, on the point of Google Maps specifically, I believe they have recently been rolling-out an upgraded postcode engine that attempts to show the rough area bounded by the postcode rather than just the median co-ordinates. This is what I get now for SN14 0RW when searching on my desktop:

Interesting, it wasn't showing for me at all earlier.

And yes, fair point about them being areas and not pinpoints, but most (all?) navigation software turns them into pinpoints to be able to give directions. That's where the difficulty lies in trying to rely on postcodes to locate someone/something, plus not all software will necessarily interpret them the same.

 

[XAM2175]

And yes, fair point about them being areas and not pinpoints, but most (all?) navigation software turns them into pinpoints to be able to give directions. That's where the difficulty lies in trying to rely on postcodes to locate someone/something, plus not all software will necessarily interpret them the same.

Exactly.

 

[contrex]

Properties which are over five miles apart are frequently included in the same postcode in rural areas. The postcode system was designed by Royal Mail to meet the specific needs of post sorting for delivery and it is not suited to many other uses such as satnavs and emergency location.

Just imagine. An organisation decides to replace paper forms for claiming travelling expenses for thousands of people with a bespoke online system. The developers are all urban types (I guess). Brilliant idea! They can enter journey start and finish postcodes and the system can use Google Maps to work out the mileage for them! What could go wrong? Plenty, believe me.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Just imagine. An organisation decides to replace paper forms for claiming travelling expenses for thousands of people with a bespoke online system. The developers are all urban types (I guess). Brilliant idea! They can enter journey start and finish postcodes and the system can use Google Maps to work out the mileage for them! What could go wrong? Plenty, believe me.

Interesting! Such as?

 

[contrex]

Interesting! Such as?

Highly paid professionals (on a very nice daily fee) with rural postcodes clogging up the phones and email inbox saying the travel system underestimates their mileage by up to 5 miles each way, if they use the postcode-to-postcode feature. They want that £4.50. No reports of overestimation or offers to repay (!). The system has another option, to input actual mileage driven, but it isn't obvious to some. Well, it's right underneath, but they said it wasn't clear on their Apple tablet, or phone or whatever. A bit of redesign had to be done. All the time staff are fielding calls and trying to guide non-IT-literate people through the system they are not approving claims, so backlogs develop and monthly payroll deadlines loom, and if these are missed, more phone calls and emails.

 

[najaB]

I'm not sure there is a free app that will give me a postcode or OSGB grid reference just based on GPS location.

I just did a search on Google Play store and found several.

That is incorrect, post codes are specific to one street and one street only. In my case, our post code only applies to half the street we live on.

That is true in some areas, not in others. Postcodes are supposed to relate to around 100 post addresses, if memory serves correctly. So in a crowded urban area they might, as in your case, cover half a street or even one large tower block. However, in rural areas they may cover a square mile or more.

 

[contrex]

However, in rural areas they may cover a square mile or more.

More than that, if a place 5 miles away from someone's home shares the same postcode, surely?

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I just did a search on Google Play store and found several.

That is true in some areas, not in others. Postcodes are supposed to relate to around 100 post addresses, if memory serves correctly.

It's sometimes up to a maximum 100 properties per individual postcode, perhaps as applies to a block of flats, but the average is more like an average 16 or so properties per postcode. (~ 30 mln addresses / ~ 1.8 mln different postcodes, according to generally available figures).

Highly paid professionals (on a very nice daily fee) with rural postcodes clogging up the phones and email inbox saying the travel system underestimates their mileage by up to 5 miles each way, if they use the postcode-to-postcode feature. They want those 9 quid.

Thanks for clarifying. Maybe not too surprising as that seems to be quite a generous mileage rate!

 

[contrex]

Thanks for clarifying. Maybe not too surprising as that seems to be quite a generous mileage rate!

Apologies, I had an arithmetic failure, of course it would be £4.50 for 10 miles (HMRC max tax-free rate). the rate reducing to 25p after the first 10,000 miles driven in each tax year.

 

[LUYMun]

The squares are 3m by 3m.

Personally I have quite a few concerns over the idea but Network Rail seems to be adopting it very enthusiastically across the whole company.

According to What3Words, if there were two squares theoretically randomly called Rail.Forum.Post and Rail.Forums.Post they say that their algorithm is clever enough to recognise the similarity and assign them to not be in the same continent, so it should be obvious which one is meant. But I’ve come across some very similar names - both plurals and homonyms - not just in the same country but in the same county.

To my surprise, Rail.Forum.Post leads to an railway line in Chicago, Illinois, USA, while Rail.Forums.Post points to a remote location in New South Wales, Australia.

 

[zwk500]

To my surprise, Rail.Forum.Post leads to an railway line in Chicago, Illinois, USA, while Rail.Forums.Post points to a remote location in New South Wales, Australia.

A single example is not helpful, but this article demonstrates the problem is not just hypothetical - https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-suitable-for-safety-critical-applications/

 

[Cdd89]

The benefit of W3W is ease of short term memorisation, transcription and verbal communication.

It’s no harder to memorise “pylon/glass/shadow” than it is to memorise “F/6/P”. But the former comes from a dictionary of 40,000 words we already know, whereas the latter comes from a dictionary of 32 characters we already know. So more characters (‘units of memorisation’) are needed for the same level of precision.

 

[PeterC]

Interesting! Such as?

These examples may have changed as some both are from before I retired:

1 A London Borough which routed all post through a central location. All properties quoted the central postcode in address details

2. Office where I worked had a box number and a dedicated postcode that resolved to the delivery office.

 

[Ediswan]

A single example is not helpful, but this article demonstrates the problem is not just hypothetical - https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-suitable-for-safety-critical-applications/

One of the comments there makes an interesting suggestion. Move 3m (or so) and get another code, which should be very different. If they both show up as the same location, you have a high degree of confidence that you are correct. If they don't match, that could be extended by getting a third as a tie-breaker. Not perfect, communications might be very poor, might be alone and stuck in mud.

For clarity, I am not a fan of what3words.

For emergency calls, Advance Mobile Location should cover many scenarios, without the need for the caller to understand any coordinate system.

Advanced Mobile Location (or AML) is a free-of-charge emergency location-based service (LBS) available on smartphones that, when a caller dials the local (in country) short dial emergency telephone number, sends the best available geolocation of the caller to a dedicated end-point, usually a Public Safety Answering Point, making the location of the caller available to emergency call takers in real-time. AML improves the time taken by emergency call takers to verify the location of callers and can improve the time taken to dispatch an emergency response.

AML is a protocol to transport data with SMS and/or HTTPS from the phone to the emergency call centre in all countries that have deployed AML; it is not an app and does not require any action from the caller. AML is supported in many countries, and by all smartphones running recent versions of Android or iOS, although it can be disabled in user settings.

AML automatically turns on Wi-Fi and location services on the handset, collects and computes location data, then sends an SMS to the emergency services containing the caller's location, before turning location services and Wi-Fi off again. The service can also send the data via an HTTPS POST request to the specified endpoint. The country implementing AML decides whether to use an SMS endpoint or an HTTPS endpoint or both.