Last time I wrote here I was adding the addr:housenumber tags to some houses automatically using the data from Property Assessment dataset. Since the license was not clear for that data (it is public and provided via Open Government initiative), I decided to pause whatever I was doing and search for an alternative source of data with an explicit license.

City of Boston provides another dataset called Live Street Address Management (SAM) Addresses and it fits our task perfectly.

At this point I decided that this is going to be a full-scale import instead of street-by-street handpicking. I joined the relevant mailing lists and sent the RFC for wiki:Boston Street Address Management (SAM) Import.

Even without any manual work, we are able to assign the unique addr:housenumber to almost 90% of the existing buildings across all the neighborhoods, which is 100% better than no house numbers at all.

The python source driving the transformation is linked from the wiki page as well as .osc files that are periodically generated as I am refining the algorithm. The files must not be uploaded until the import is approved (and .osn files must not be uploaded at all), but you can load them locally and see what the future holds for Boston.