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

[Sampson, David]

At our last meeting someone that works at rediscovery noted that the
centorid data is old, 4-6 years.

Also note some of the data might be way off.  Drop them a line to double
check, but I understand that all data through that site falls under a
free use non-exclusive licence, check their user agreement.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Putler [mailto:putler at sauder.ubc.ca] 
Sent: October 17, 2006 13:48
To: can_rnf at geodata.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [RNFdev] Looking for postal code lat/lng's

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
>
>