Street aliases are a powerful tool when used properly. This section will help you determine when it is a good time to use a street alias. A street alias allows two streets to be referenced as one street.
Street alias are an "always is" relationship. For example, "Badway" always is "Broadway". It is important that you only use street aliases when the location always is the other location. If you have a street (like a state highway) that might jump from one street to another, a street alias has the possibility of combining two intersections.
Street aliases can be more than one level deep. Allowing for you to alias Badway to Broadway, and then alias Broadway to Broadway Blvd.
Street aliases can only be created by Group Administrators. Alias group information is stored in an alias group object, but Street aliases are created and edited in the streets normalizer. A street alias will link two streets together so that requesting one street will gather the collisions from the other. The streets normalizers can be found in the group admin section of Crash Magic under the user group .shared user.
Most users will only have one street normalizer, but depending on the collision data in use multiple street normalizers can be found. Clients should review the study definition to determine the specific normalizer to be used.
In this example the Alias groups Hidden and Visible are enabled in the Local street normalizer.
Alias groups that are checked enabled will be used by the normalizer.
The visible check box determines whether the aliases should be displayed in the selection list. In the previous example a misspelled street name like Badway is not an actual street, and should not be in the list of selectable streets. Defining the alias in an alias group where Visible is unchecked will ensure that any streets selected as "From" in the alias group will not be displayed in the street selection list.
A street that has two valid street names should be placed in an alias group that is visible. For example if Hwy 85 is Broadway, and it is valid for a user to select either street name then an alias entry should be placed in a visible alias group. This will allow the user to see Hwy 85 and/or Broadway in a street selection box.
To add, delete or edit a street alias click on the alias group name to be taken to the street alias editor.