Naming city streets (why not alphabetical?)

[AFC-911]

I don't know why they choose names and not have it alphabetical. I think whomever designed Washington DC had it right.

Sequential numbers and letters. It just makes sense.

[legion]

It works fine when you lay out a city center all at once. It works less well as a city grows and you have more than 26 streets. What do you call the streets added above A?

[wdfifteen]

+1

Adding to the confusion is giving streets honorary names in addition to their original names. We have a street in town that is both Limestone St. and James McGee Blvd. It drives people crazy when you give them directions.
"Did you say, 'Limestone St. or James McGee Blvd.'?"
"Both."
"Huh?

[stomachmonkey]

Would make sense if you are planning a city / town from nothing.

But realistically most cities as we know them today started much much smaller and grew organically with no real insight into what they would be today.

Often names have some sort of historical relevance to their origins.

Around here a bunch of your major roads were simply numbered. The main drag outside my community is FM407 where FM stands for Farm to Market.

It does also have a name, Justin Rd. Likely because at one end of it is Justin TX, where the boots come from.

[BeyGon]

another very well laid out place is Salt Lake City,

[sammyg2]

Salt lake city has a pretty good system. kinda like grid coordinates.

Fer instance: my old house (a hundred years ago) was 4414 south, 4190 west.
(in the rough part of town. didn't realize it when i lived there).

[Jolly Amaranto]

Originally Posted by legion

It works fine when you lay out a city center all at once. It works less well as a city grows and you have more than 26 streets. What do you call the streets added above A?

In Galveston unless given a name, the north/south streets have numbers like 61st Street etc. The east/west streets are given letters. However there are more than 26 so there is a "1/2" street between each. Like Ave O, Ave O 1/2, Ave P, Ave P 1/2 and so on.

[sammyg2]

Missed it by that much .....

[id10t]

pure numbers here with the exception of 4 or 5 roads that are us/state/county roads (numbered too) but are also labeled with the name of the next town over - newberry rd , waldo rd etc

[nota]

worse our area is part alpha but with gaps of random names in no order
and a sprinkling of numbered streets and aves near the county grid
with lots of curved roads and odd angles so lots of drives and roads too

[nota]

my old house in coral gables changed the ave name at the corner
maderia became obisbo because ?

[nota]

also lots of non connected streets with the same name
one has 5 you can't get there from here stretches
as it follows a canal but has no bridges

[sammyg2]

Hardest place I ever tried to navigate was near Lancaster PA.
I could get turned around and lost in three blocks in that area.
But in my defense the roads there change directions there every 50 feet!

Whoever invented the straight line did not live in PA.

[Noah930]

Funny, as the alphabetical order street name thing made me immediately think of the Back Bay in Boston (where the streets are named Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, & Exeter), yet overall Boston is one of the most ridiculously laid out street systems I've ever encountered.

[javadog]

Tulsa has that and more. It makes it really easy to get around here if you have half a brain. If you have a whole brain, the cars practically drive themselves.

[Sebscst]

The city I live in is one of the best laid out places ever. In the differant areas all the streets start with the same letter i.e. We the F section, B section, C section and so on. Then the second letter is kept in order so conley, Columbia, colechester, Corning, and so on are all close together. Then they use parkways for the main streets, drives are off the parkways, lanes are all off drives, courts are long dead ends off drives or lanes, and places are short dead ends. You can find any address without using a map as long as you know what section to go to.

[Bill Douglas]

Where I live "goat tracks" became roads, and they were named after the original early settler who lived at the end of that road. The bigger roads in the city were named after people who had made an early contribution to the growth of the place. Street numbers are lowest number starts at the end of the street that is closest to the central post office. I'm guessing lots of places are like this.

[john70t]

The avenues in San Francisco do that.
Avenues 1->48 going west from haightashbury/twinpeaks and A->Z going south from Golden Gate Park.

One of my pet peeves are different streets that have the same name.
For instance there is a Geddes that extends out from downtown through neighborhoods and stops at the south side of a bridge. Ok. On the north side of the bridge it chops off another street and continues east. Way way east. So downtown and out of town sections are the same street. There not even east/west signified.

And lakes in Michigan?
There are 17 Long Lakes, 8 Silver lakes, 3 Portage/Pleasant/Pine/etc, 6 Murphy, 4 Grass, the list goes on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_in_Michigan

[CurtEgerer]

The craziest road names I've seen are in Indiana, near Muncie. So when following the GPS, the directions are something like this in that monotone computer voice: go East on East County Road 481 South, then South on North 650 East Road, then East on East 350 North Road, then North on South County Road 460 West, then ....

Wouldn't it be a LOT easier to go East on Washington, then South on Jefferson, then East on Franklin, then ....

[rattlsnak]

Phoenix is laid out great with sequential numbering but Atlanta is HORRIBLE. EVERY street changes names randomly when crossing other streets. I drive to work for 7 miles on the SAME road and it changes names 6 times on just that part. WHY??????????????????????????