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Beyond Streets and Avenues: Simple Visual Guide to Different Types of Roads
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y agoHow about a 'Common'? My town has given to naming roadways like: Winding Ridge Common Maple Leaf Common Etc.
- hardlianotion 9y agoInteresting and maybe useful to me - if UK taxonomy is similar. However: "Avenue (Ave): may have trees on one side, perpendicular to streets" I can't think of a sensible tree/road relationship in which the tree is not perpendicular to the road direction. Does this make sense to anyone else?
- dave84 9y agoI don't think the perpendicular remark is about the trees specifically, just Avenues being perpendicular to streets.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hardlianotion 9y agod'oh. Thanks to all that pointed this out.
- zhte415 9y agoWhat I can think of the the UK, please add or disagree, perhaps there's also regional variation: * Street - A road that traditionally had shops; may or may not today * Road - Linking 2 places, may or may not have buildings * Lane - Traditionally lined by bushes, winding, or otherwise 'small' * Gardens - Limited to residential housing * Court - Enclosed square * Square - With a road/roads encircling it * Causeway - Next to the sea, sure * Avenue - Can recall a handful growing up but nothing made them distinguishable. Roads invariably as straight lines, other than the ones the Romans built, are an alien concept * Boulevard - Never met a boulevard in the UK * Parkway - Only one I can think of is Bristol Parkway, but I think of that as a train station
- barcoder 9y ago* Drove - Used for bringing livestock to market. Left over from agricultural times.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Symbiote 9y ago* Street Doesn't need shops, this is the default word within any built-up area (even a village centre). * Square - With a road/roads encircling it No, this would be a paved area usually outside significant buildings. Often contained a market. * Market - the market square, or the streets at its sides * Causeway That's a road to an island that floods at high tide. * Mews -- houses that used to be stables * Circus -- roads joining with a circular "square" (Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus). Boulevard, avenue and parkway tend to suggest imported American terms for places under 80 years old. * Parade -- small shops in a 20th century development * Hill -- obvious * Gate -- either a city gate, or cognate to the Norse word for street (c.f. Danish gade). * Terrace, drive, crescent, esplanade, villas, walk, approach, ...
- wink 9y agoFinally a domain where English is a lot more specific, ruining the joke on us Germans :P Common road/street identifiers here include: - X-Y-Strasse = e.g. "John Smith Street", bigger street - X-Weg = e.g. "Falcon Road", smaller street, probably more rural, but hard to tell - Y-Gasse = e.g. "Market Alley", smaller street, probably more urban, but hard to tell - X-Allee = e.g "Poplar Alley", it has trees on both sides - X-Ring/Bogen = really only circular roads, not so common And of course stuff like "XYZ-Platz" (Place/Square) and when there's water around, "XYZ-Damm" (Dike) I think my point is that 90% use Strasse/Weg/Platz and only 10% combined are all the rest - or I am totally oblivious to the rules, but afaik I've never seen anything like naming them different based on direction or hard criteria for buildings around (exception is "Allee") NB: I used hyphenation in my examples to better distinguish, this is only the correct form for most given names. e.g. it would "Johann-Schmidt-Strasse", but written in one word (e.g. "Falkenweg" for "Falcon Road") and in 2 words for place names, e.g. "Berliner Strasse" for "Berlin Street").
- 9y ago
- barrkel 9y agoIt's two separate clauses; the trees run along the road, the avenue is perpendicular to a street. Avenue in the UK, outside newer built suburbs, means tree-lined, explicitly. I used to live on Avenue Road in London, which gets a double take from people used to American naming conventions.
- oska 9y agoA good editor would have replaced that comma with a semicolon.
- JadeNB 9y ago> > "Avenue (Ave): may have trees on one side, perpendicular to streets" > A good editor would have replaced that comma with a semicolon. As usual for such problems, there are multiple fixes. I think just switching the clauses, as in "Avenue: perpendicular to streets, may have trees on one side", is just as clear (although of course it's easy to come up with examples where such a re-ordering won't do it).
- tzs 9y agoI don't think switching the clauses helps. The two clauses are meant to be completely independent. In some places "avenue" means a road having trees on the side, regardless of how that road is related to streets. In other places, "avenue" means perpendicular to streets, regardless of whether or not it has trees. An example of such a place is Seattle, which chooses "street" or "avenue" based solely on direction. Streets run east/west, avenues run north/south.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- askvictor 9y agoI read a page on this quite recently (but can't find it right now); however the definitions were somewhat different - iirc, a road connects two places, a street is perpendicular to a road, avenue is perpendicular to a street.
- Theodores 9y agoI added a Google Map at zoom 16 or so for customer addresses in the backend of an ecommerce store to help improve deliverability. These addresses are primarily in the USA and I set it to the tilted 'drone' view. This seems to be a world that is always sunny. I am constantly taken aback by the geometry of some of the places that show up in this map view, often a 'crescent' informs you that the address must be correct because it is a 'crescent' that you expect the pin to be on, the shape visually confirms things nicely. 'Crescent' is an obvious clue but you would be surprised with what registers at a glance to confirm the address is likely to be correct.
- pragone 9y agoWhere is this for? I can't think of anywhere I've lived in the northeast (NJ, NY, PA) where this strongly applies. Here's one: I live on a "Drive". It's road built through townhouse complex. Pretty much the exact opposite of what I'd call "long, winding road shaped by natural environments". It connects to a "court", which is another road through the complex that most certainly does not "[end] in a circle or loop – like a plaza or square". Edit: "Road" isn't even on this list! 2nd Edit: I've consulted some traffic engineers. I'm genuinely curious to see what they say.
- maxerickson 9y agoI think a more likely rule is that the longer roads in a development are often named "Drive" and they are more likely to connect to the rest of the street network.
- falcolas 9y agoAs per the end of an article - these are not actually codified anywhere, they just happen to be true more often than not. More of an unofficial naming code than a hard-and-fast rule.
- 13of40 9y agoI live in a Pacific Northwest suburb and they pretty much follow this convention to the letter. Probably has something to do with how recently everything here was built.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thex10 9y agoReally? I'm from NYC and FDR Drive is absolutely shaped by the East River, and most the other stuff in the video checks out there too..
- JonathonW 9y agoDoesn't really work around here, either (Nashville, TN area)-- the only reasonably consistent rules here are that numbered streets on one side of the river are "Avenues", numbered streets on the other side are "Streets", and most of the Civil War-era turnpikes have retained their names (mostly named after where they go) and are called "Pikes". Otherwise, we've got "Avenues" and "Streets" all mixed around (running both parallel and perpendicular to each other. "Drives" which are straight, shortest paths between two points without any regard to the natural geography. "Boulevards" that are little undivided two-lane neighborhood streets, and "Lanes" that are heavily-trafficked four-lane roads with medians. Maybe road naming is more consistent in newer, more highly planned cities?
- krallja 9y agoA freeway has no stop lights or stop signs; traffic is free to move along the entire way. An Interstate is a freeway that is part of the Interstate Highway System.
- dnautics 9y agoA freeway has no tolls.
- krallja 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled-access_highway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled-access_highway
- dnautics 9y agoAmong controlled access highways, some have tolls, and these are not referred to as freeways.
- krallja 9y agoThe Wikipedia article I linked notes that the ITE defines a freeway as: > Freeway: A divided major roadway with full control of access and with no crossings at grade. This definition applies to toll as well as toll-free roads.
- proyb2 9y agoRoundabout - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCXtcXD17qU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCXtcXD17qU Taxiway - is a path for aircraft at an airport connecting runways with aprons, hangars, terminals and other facilities.
- Skylled 9y agoMy childhood home was on "Eighth Street Drive." It's a two block long strip that is about ten feet shy of connecting with Eighth Street, so they slapped a different name on it.
- Spooky23 9y agoI lived on 72nd St in Queens. The next block was 72nd place, and there was a 72nd terrace since renamed after someone.
- dyeje 9y agoI found it amusing they gave this definition: Turnpike (Tpke): usually an expressway with a toll booth but there is no definition of expressway listed.
- elchief 9y agoThen of course there's Avenue Road in Toronto en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_Road And the awful Stroad https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2013/3/4/the-stroad.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2013/3/4/the-stroad.html