Tag:amenity=post_box

+/- amenity=post_box Description Used to mark the location of a postbox. Used on these elements Useful combination collection_times=* name=* operator=* ref=* drive_through=yes/no Used combinations in World Australia/Oceania Europe (list) Asia (list) Central America (list) South America (list) Africa (list) Status Undefined

A post box (AE collection box, mailbox or drop box) is a facility to send out stamped postal items (letters & small goods).

Please also visit the discussion page!

Contents 1 Usage 1.1 Extended Usage 2 Related 3 Locating postboxes in the UK 3.1 Post box type (in the UK) 4 Post boxes standing together 5 Post box images

Usage

amenity=post_box

Extended Usage

• amenity=post_box
  • operator=* (company name)
  • brand=* (trade name of the post service)
  • ref=* (if the post box has a reference number)
  • collection_times=* (now approved, see discussion and proposal)
  • drive_through=yes/no - to indicate if you can drive up to the post box and drop the mail in from your car.

Some further ideas for more detailed tagging are being discussed at Proposed_features/Extend_post_box

Related

• amenity=post_office
• Packstation

Locating postboxes in the UK

The Royal Mail has supplied dracos.co.uk a list of every postbox’s location – unfortunately, it did not have useful co-ordinates, only postcodes or sub-postcodes and some textual data.

So at dracos.co.uk you can look up the postboxes near you by entering the first half of your postcode, locate one whose location you know on the map, pick which postbox you’ve located, and submit. The pages also include postbox last collection times, if we know them.

An even simpler method is to add a ref=* to your amenity=post_box - dracos' site will import this every week or so.

References are usually in the format AA1 123 and can be found at the bottom of the information plate on a postbox:

(click to enlarge)

The reference, location and collection times of all Royal Mail postboxes (August 2009) can be seen within a Freedom of Information Request. A copy of data from the PDFs transcribed into a TSV file is available here.

Mappers recording UK postboxes might be interested in Post Hoc, a tool by user:rjw62 to analyse and compare the OSM and dracos.co.uk postbox data. It flags up inconsistencies and indicates locations that would benefit from a (new) survey.

Post box type (in the UK)

The project of the week from September 2010 suggests use of the type=* tag. Here are just a couple of the web sites which might aid in identification. If anyone knows of a better source please add it here

• P.U.L.P
• History of British Letterboxes

Post boxes standing together

Sometimes several post boxes are standing together and can most often be tagged with one single node. If the boxes have different reference numbers this is tagged as ref=12242;23214. You can also use two separate nodes in such cases, which may be more appropriate if the boxes are two separate physical entities. It would also be necessary to use two nodes if the two boxes had different collection times or item restrictions and you wanted to tag these differences.

Post box images

• 

  Germany, operator: Deutsche Post AG

• 

  Sweden, operator: Posten

• 

  Croatia, operator: Hrvatska pošta

• 

  Italy, location: Roma Garbatella, operator: PosteItaliane

Some more international images can be found in the Wikipedia:

• DE
• EN

Related terms: letterbox. mail box. post box.