Create an Address Locator with Tiger files

[BeckyBreidenbach]

I am trying to create an address locator for the state of Texas (it can be split into 11 regions).  I read over the PDF on relationships on the Census Bureau's website(http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/TGRSHP10SF1CH6.pdf).  They recommend using the All Lines shapefiles which also require the Address Ranges Relationship files for all of the address data.  I have downloaded several county All Lines shapefiles and the Address Ranges Relationship files for these counties.  I merged the shapefiles for the counties and the tables and now have one shapefile and one table.  The Census Bureau says to link these two files using the TLID field.  However, it is a one (shapefile) to many (table) relationship since each line segment has multiple address rnages associated with it.  I have not created an address locator before, but I understand it needs to be a single file.  How can I join these to use them as intended - to create an address locator?

[BenjaminBauman]

The 2011 release is pretty disappointing. Using the All Lines shapefile generated a match rate that was 2 percent lower than the 2010 version. Tellingly, the number of records for the 2011 table is substantially less - whereas the 2011 table contains 2150073 records (for all of Illinois), the 2010 table has 2182607.

Including the new Address Range shapefile as the alternate name table reduced the number of matched and unmatched address, and increased the ties. Roughly three quarters of the new ties were from the matched pile and the other quarter were from the unmatched. This applies to both the 2010 and 2011 All Line locators used. Essentially, the address range shapefile is useless.

The TIGER/Line website states that the 2010 Shapefiles page will be released on a rolling basis through 2013. I would have thought that the 2011 release would use 2010 as a baseline for further improvements, but from what I can tell, 2011 is inferior to 2010 (at least, for All Lines Illinois counties). Obviously, the 2011 release still has a lot of kinks that need to be worked out.

[BenjaminBauman]

I just created a locator using solely the Address Ranges shapefile, and it is in fact better than both 2011 and 2010 All Lines shapefiles, so I take back some of what I had said in the previous comment. I was under the impression that the Address Ranges shapefile was to be treated as an Alternate Name Table like the 2010 Address Ranges table, but it seems as if it is more suitable as the Primary Table. The 2011 All Lines shapefile still appears useless, however, having picked up only 8 unique addresses out of a total of over 300,000 using a composite consisting of 2010 All Lines, 2011 All Lines, and 2011 Address Ranges.