[RNFdev] Looking for postal code lat/lng's

[Dan Putler]

Hi Lance,

At the six digit postal code level, no. What is available are  
centroids for forward sortation areas (known commonly as FSAs, which  
are the first three digits of a Canada Post postal code). FSAs are at  
roughly the same granularity as five digit US zip codes, while the  
full six digit postal code is roughly equivalent to a US zip+4.

There is an experimental web service that will dump an FSA centroid  
as a gml file. Although, one that is a bit funky. You can access it  
using wget. The command below would allows you to get a centroid for  
the V0J FSA (this is a rural area in British Columbia) from a unix  
command line.

wget --post- 
data="version=1.0.0&request=GetPostalCode&sortarea=FSA&code=V0J" \
--output-document="V0J.gml"\
http://geoservices.cgdi.ca/cgi-bin/postalcode/postalcode.cgi

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the legal restrictions are in terms  
of the use of this data. As Dave pointed out in his earlier email,  
Canada Post holds onto their data more tightly than does the US  
Postal Service.

Dan

On 17-Oct-06, at 10:07 AM, Lance McKee wrote:

> Hello.
>
> I'm creating a website for which it would be helpful to have a  
> table of Canada Postal Codes and their lat/lng coordinates. Is this  
> data available?  Jo Walsh thought you might be able to help me.
>
> Lance
>
> Lance McKee
> 10 Circuit Avenue East
> Worcester, MA 01603
> 508-752-0108 phone/fax
> 508-868-2295 cell
> lancemckee at charter.net
>
>