I am looking at the Tiger 2013 data sets, in particular the Edge, Feature and, Range tables.
It seems that the Edge tables have all the data elements that are in the Feature and Range sets. Is this true for the entire US sets? If the Edge tables do in fact contain all the data elements that are in the Feature and Range tables, why have 3 separate tables?
The Edge tables do not have all the data elements that are in the Feature and Range datasets. A single edge, which can be best described as a continuous and uninterrupted portion of a road/street/highway, is unique. Features provide information on the road/street/highway name of a particular edge. Ranges provide the range of address numbers that span across a particular left or right side of an edge. Here is where the separate feature and range tables come in. A particular edge can have more than one name. For instance, I know of a highway that has three official names in one particular section, Imperial Highway, I-60, and the Richard Nixon Freeway. The edge shapefile would only list its primary name which would probably be I-60. The features tables will list all names linked to that edge through the TLID field. This works similarly for address ranges. All have edges have a defined direction, and therefore a left and right side can be defined.A road might have an apartment complex which lists it first floor from 100 to 130 along an edge and its second floor from 200 to 230 along the same edge. In that situation there might be two address ranges for the same edge on the same side which also links through the TLID field.
