Hey you boring Americans!

[Cia]

The street signs in the historic neighborhood district are black lettering on white; everywhere else in town it's white on green although outside of town you can sometimes find signs that are green on white.

[Greenday]

What other color would you use? Green is the most visible color in the spectrum.

[wolfie]

Is that why hunter's vests, life jackets, prisoners' jumpsuits, and anything else that needs to be seen for safety purposes is coloured "International Green"?

[protege]

There's an area of my city where all the roads are named, in alphabetical order, after various species of birds.

We have a couple of areas outside of Pittsburgh where the streets have doggie names--Collie, Pointer, Setter, etc.

Some areas have different colors on the street signs. Most are the boring green/white variety. But, you'll see black/orange, blue/yellow, black/white (not many of these now, since they're not reflective), or blue/white depending on which neighborhood you're driving through.

[Sunshine]

Ours here are white on green. The next town over has white on red. My housing development has oil company names...shell, gulf, etc. We had a few named after airlines too.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

Also,don't you do house names? Some of your addresses are like trying to decipher a code...

5214 W 38 S 700 #5 . Could be a knitting pattern for all I know...

Some of ours are just as bad, ex

2146 141 Highpoint 37 Cedar 8 A

That's fire number 2146 on road 141, which is called highpoint, 37 on that road is called cedar, number 8 on cedar, then driveway A

The cedar and the highpoint aren't real road names, except in the sense that that's what the sign at the end of the road says, the sign for 2146 or 37 might or might not be marking the road, the 'road' is identified by it's fire number, but that doesn't mean it's signed. It's a real mystery why I get lost sometimes

I'm not sure how naming the houses would help at all though, unless you had a sign saying HOUSENAME at the end of each junction on the way to the driveway.

[protege]

Does anyone out there remember star routes? Basically, a "star route" was someone who was contracted to deliver mail through the post office. My grandparents didn't actually have a street address, because they lived in the country. Instead, they had something like "Joe Smith, Spraggs Star Route. For nearly 5 decades, that was their address, until their country finally joined the regional 911 system. All of the star routes got replaced by address numbers and boring street names in the early 2000s. A shame really, since everyone in the county knew where you meant when you'd say "Spraggs Star Route"

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Street signs in Irv's city are white lettering on a blue background.

I find them easier to read than the white lettering on green signs they replaced.

[Argabarga]

Does anyone out there remember star routes? )

911 did away with that unique piece of Americana.

Until it came in the 21st Century, my address was a Rural Route box number, and it kept changing as more and more people moved out here, on paper, I've moved 5 times without ever packing a box.

Went from RR1 (route 1) to RR3 (route 3) and the box number changed a couple times too, until the road itself got a name, and then, when 911 came around, the driveway got named (it was long enough to qualify as a road, even though the only place it went at the time was the house )

[Jester]

The Phoenix area has several streets that change names as you drive along them.

Hayden becomes McClintock, Scottsdale becomes Hayden, Olives becomes Dunlap, Apache becomes Main, Mesa becomes McQueen, Cooper becomes Stapley, etc., etc., and those are going in a straight line, more or less. Sometimes, the roads curve into a completely new direction and become entirely new roads, even though you have not turned off of the road you're on. Thus, if you drive far enough north on Mill, you will end up driving west on Van Buren.

It's not limited to Phoenix, either. Here in Key West, without turning off the road you are on, you can drive on Truman, North Roosevelt, South Roosevelt, Bertha, 1st, Palm, and Eaton. And this is only a 2 by 4 mile island!

[bhskittykatt]

The Phoenix area has several streets that change names as you drive along them.

We almost have the opposite problem.

Behold:


That's one of the streets I deliver to. It is in 7 different noncontinuous sections. It makes finding addresses lots of fun. It is not the only street like this in town...

[Jester]

Not exactly a truly opposite problem, as many streets in Phoenix do the exact same thing. They continue along the imaginary grid line they are on, even though the road itself doesn't always continue. Not a huge issue with major arterial roads (most of the time), but I'd imagine for delivery drivers and cabbies it can be a royal pain in the ass for less major streets. I've run into issues with it myself, just tooling around.

[Javarod]

The Phoenix area has several streets that change names as you drive along them.

Hayden becomes McClintock, Scottsdale becomes Hayden, Olives becomes Dunlap, Apache becomes Main, Mesa becomes McQueen, Cooper becomes Stapley, etc., etc., and those are going in a straight line, more or less. Sometimes, the roads curve into a completely new direction and become entirely new roads, even though you have not turned off of the road you're on. Thus, if you drive far enough north on Mill, you will end up driving west on Van Buren.

Actually you're mostly right on that, there's two key things at play in here. One is that the area doesn't like streets to dead end, so if two streets 90˚ apart end at the same place, they just put a curve there, see Mill and Van Buren for an example, but its very common on small streets in housing developments.

As to the Apache to Main, and so on, that happens because before the 80s Phoenix and its suburbs were often very separate with few roads connecting them, so two roads that didn't connect but ran basically along the same line would have two different names. Eventually those streets grew together, and gave you what you have now. Because of the county grid that includes numbering standards, its not as bad for the most part, although there are non-standard pockets here an there, and Buckeye is an absolute nightmare to navigate in spots.

It's not limited to Phoenix, either. Here in Key West, without turning off the road you are on, you can drive on Truman, North Roosevelt, South Roosevelt, Bertha, 1st, Palm, and Eaton. And this is only a 2 by 4 mile island!

Not exactly a truly opposite problem, as many streets in Phoenix do the exact same thing. They continue along the imaginary grid line they are on, even though the road itself doesn't always continue. Not a huge issue with major arterial roads (most of the time), but I'd imagine for delivery drivers and cabbies it can be a royal pain in the ass for less major streets. I've run into issues with it myself, just tooling around.

Actually it was never really that bad for the most part thanks to the aforementioned numbering plan included in the grid. For example, 778 W Virginia Ave would be near 8th Ave since Avenues are north-south streets only on the west side of the county, and counting starts with zero at that intersection going west to the next avenue line regardless of whether or not that line actually exists. So, even if Virginia doesn't go through all the way, find where 8th Ave and Virginia should be, then move slightly east, it was pretty rare to find an address that could be on either side of a gap in the street.

Now if you want confusing, i was covering deliveries for a Papa Johns near Holmdel NJ, and went into a housing development made of house clusters on streets starting with a particular letter. No pattern to the words chosen aside from them all starting with A, then B, and so on. Now that was a challenge to deliver to.

[Jester]

Oh, I'm familiar with how the grid works in Phoenix, and for people like you and me, it's really not that tough. But not everyone has as easy a time as we do. The trouble I allude to with such navigation all comes from stories my mother and others with her directional disability have told me. And if you're new to Phoenix, it can be just confusing as hell, especially if you don't know about the Streets and Avenues.

[wolfie]

Try taking the Trans Canada Highway eastbound through Regina, Saskatchewan. The road that starts out as the TCH on the west side of town loops around, and if you miss the offramp onto what becomes the TCH leaving town eastbound, you'll find yourself heading westbound again as the road peters out from a major 4-lane to a 2-lane farm road.