Yeah just because Street has an intersection doesn’t mean it’s not a street. In fact most streets have intersections. The example he gave in Aberdeen has intersections it’s not 2 miles of street with no cross-streets. Lawrence’s definition said that a street is must have buildings on both sides for the entire run for to be counted in his how long is a street evaluation (names aside because they are assigned randomly and often persist after the character of the area has changed i.e. it gets built up). By that Definition Western Avenue is most definitely a street there are buildings on both sides of that street for all 27 miles.
Generally in the u.s. street is generic for anything that you drive a vehicle on.. It may be named boulevard avenue road highway interstate or street, but generically they're all streets. If I'm giving someone direction's or using an address, I call it what it's named. But if I'm in downtown Nashville, my hometown, and someone asked me where Broadway is I might say it's three streets over. None of the roads that you have to cross to get there are named street, they're all named avenue, but I'm not going to say it's three avenues in that direction.
@@KarenCatMom2 in my experience, street is usually reserved for roads inside cities. Road is used multiply ways. As general term (as in the first sentence). For larger "streets", frequently with less access. Roads outside of cities. And probably a few others that I can't think of at the moment.
@@johnbennett1465 I had the same thought about distinguishing a street vs. a road. A “street” is *always* in a city or a town. It implies there are other streets parallel to it, within the same city or town. A “road” usually runs through a town, continuing beyond the city/town limits - or at least, beyond the boundaries in place when the road was named. (In many metropolitan areas, towns and cities have expanded so far that they border each other. Without signage, it can be hard to tell exactly where one suburb merges into the next.) A “highway” extends through a series of cities, possibly even crossing multiple states. Within a city, some streets may be named “street,” “avenue,” “boulevard,” “lane,” or any number of other labels. But “street” would be the generic term. In the Nashville example given above, I would say that Broadway is “three blocks over”, i.e. it’s the third street the visitor would cross by walking in the designated direction…or, the visitor would have to walk along one side of each of three city blocks before reaching Broadway. I hope this is helpful @The Beesleys 💐
All streets in the continental US have at least one intersection, and all streets longer than one block, have multiple intersections. To find a street with no intersections, you'd have to go someplace extremely remote that is not connected to any road networks and only has one street in the entire community. It would probably either be on a coral atoll, or in one of the polar regions, and good luck finding one that's continuously flanked by buildings.
In the U.S., "street" is a general term for almost any route of public access, almost always to drive on (we have only a handful of pedestrian streets, which we call pedestrian "malls"). These can be any length. A "block" is any section of a street between two cross-streets, which in Britain seems to be what you call a "street". Our streets are named or numbered and can be followed by an endless number "category" terms. These include "street" and "avenue" (the most common), as well as "boulevard", "lane", "road", "court", "place", etc. There is no real distinguishing feature/reason for the use of the categories. Those that are not labeled street or avenue are designated for charm...making the name and neighborhood appear more quaint. "Highway" is typically only used for major roads that are numbered as part of the national, state, or county highway systems. We also have a large number of service alleys that run at the backs of the property lots between two streets. These are rarely named and are used primarily for garbage collection, utilities, and sometimes for access to garages located at the back of a property. Love your videos! I look forward to more.
Like many others, my American suburban neighborhood has short streets with unnecessary curves. This (in theory) encourages people to drive more slowly and helps to prevent the neighborhood from seeming urban. We have quite the variety of words given to describe the streets. Mine is called a "road." Others are called "drive," "street," "avenue," "boulevard," "way," "crescent," "court," and "circle." I suppose the plat (estate) developers just liked the variety.
Here is what the standard is suppose to be, though many roads are not properly labeled or carry a label that applied when it was originally planned/built but no longer applies after future development, and different cities/municipalities may have different official standards for naming road types: Road - Anything that connects two points (all of the following are types of road) Way - A side street off a road. Street - A public way with buildings on both sides. Avenue - The same as a street but build perpendicular to them (if the street is north-south, the avenue should be east-west) Boulevard - A wide street in a city with a median in the middle. Lane - A narrow road. Drive - A winding road that has its route shaped by natural features such as a lake or mountain. Terrace - A road that runs along the top of a slope. Place - A road with no throughway. Court - A road with no throughway that ends in a loop or cul-de-sac. Circle - A road with no throughway, containing a closed loop beginning and ending at intersections with the same street, or where the looped street closes onto itself. Crescent - A winding, curved road that typically attaches to another road at each end Plaza or Square - An open public space that's surrounded by businesses or streets. in most cities, there are roads that should be boulevards that are called a different road type, usually because they weren't originally boulevards, many "Lanes" are expanded into a street/avenue/way later on but keep their "lane" name, and some places, courts, & circles will have throughways added later.
@JPMadden If you ever wanted to see US city street naming at its worst, lookup up Hickory, NC. Despite being in the Appalachian foothills, there was a failed attempt at a grid system. There are some straightline streets through town but not many. The primary streets are labeled numerically with suffix Avenue for "horizontal" & Street for "vertical" & an ordinal direction NE, NW, SE, SW after Ave or St. As for secondary streets, they can be just short one or two block street segments connecting other streets, long curved &/or winding including compass directional changes. Secondary streets are also named numerically but have a double suffix & an ordination. Such as 8th Ave Dr SE, 10th St Pl NW. Secondary street numeric name & first suffix are an attempt to relate that secondary street is off of or nearest to the primary street of same number & suffix. But with naturally hilly topography, natural barriers (lakes, rivers, creeks, steep hills) the Primary street numbers don't make sense let alone Secondary streets. To make matters worse, street names will change without turning off the street. So that's the number, primary suffix, secondary suffix (if a secondary street), & ordinal direction all change in an eye blink. This same naming convention exists inside the winding streets & loops of planned development (planned neighborhoods, condo & apartment complexes, & commercial/industrial complexes).
I understand your confusion. I moved to Queens, in NYC. My friend said he lives close by, just off 99th St at 63rd. One day I figured I stop by. It's a 1 km walk. 63rd Drive, Avenue, and Road all crossed 99th. His guitar shop was at 63rd and 98th. There was 98th Place and 98th Street. All the addresses were in the 4 digits divided in half with a dash 98-00 and so forth. I gave up and went home. Add to that my train stop is Woodhaven Blvd. Not to be confused with the Woodhaven Blvd station on the other side of a huge forested area, which I thought was Brooklyn but is still Queens until you cross the street, or road, or Blvd. It's taken me over a year not to get lost going around the corner
One of the biggest differences between a street, and a road is that pedestrians typically have more rights on a street and streets typically serve more as a common space, rather than a means of transport, whereas pedestrians typically have far less rights on a road, as there primary function is to get vehicles from point a to point b.
The US has streets, avenues, boulevards, lanes, ways, plaza, terraces, places, courts, and several more so confusion is understandable. I live on a farm and was raised in the country. We call city streets and country roads. Keeps things easier
Also, as someone who grew up in the suburbs of NYC (in New Jersey), some streets have numbers that start over when you cross into a new town even though it’s still the same street. 🤷♀️
I live near a street that is in one city and four boroughs (in Pennsylvania): California Avenue, Lincoln Avenue, California Avenue, Church Avenue, and Center Avenue. Another one nearby is W 7th Avenue, E 8th Avenue, River Road,, Kennywood Boulevard, Duquesne Boulevard, Duquesne Road, Dravosburg Road, Washington Avenue, and Clairon-Dravosburg Road.
Yonge Street in Toronto is recognized as the longest street in the world - it's 56 km (35 miles) long, and runs the entire vertical length of the city.
The American English dictionary (Webster's Third New International) essentially defines a "road" as a path that travels between two places of distinct names, and a "street" as a path constrained within the limits of a single named place. Additionally, the street is broader than an alley and narrower than an avenue. This seems to disregard the number, type, or regularity of structures abutting the path. The "street" of my residence is confined within the boundaries of my neighborhood and the city, but the "road" abutted by my local Wal-mart passes between two neighborhoods within the boundaries of the city.
I had to look this up, because even though ive been here all my life, it can still be confusing. Heres what i found. So a 'road' is anything that connects two points, while 'streets' are public ways which have buildings on either side. Avenues, meanwhile, have the same attributes as streets but run perpendicular to them, while a boulevard is essentially a wide street (or avenue), with a median through the middle
I'm stunned that "Market Street" does not appear on either of the top ten U.S. lists. In my area of the country, I believe Market is probably the second most common street name behind only Main. Many smaller towns and villages don't really have enough streets to warrant having to use a numbering system, but they nearly all have a Main and a Market Street.
That surprised me too; Market Street is nearly universal in the Midwest. Main street often gets renamed to something else, e.g., in Galion it got renamed to Harding Way (long story involving local politics, but it happened when the Lincoln Highway moved its official route to not go through the middle of every single town, because people no longer wanted to stop for the night every eleven miles after buying cars that go faster than horses). In other communities I've lived in, the main drag has been called State Street (Hastings, MI), Kings Highway (Winona Lake, IN), Cherry Street (Canal Fulton, OH). But yeah, all but one of these communities has a Market Street, and probably the only reason Winona Lake doesn't, is because it would be confusing and redundant. (Market Street in neighboring Warsaw is literally only four blocks away from Kings Highway in Winona Lake.) The fact that Market Street doesn't show up in the top ten, suggests to me that it's far less common in another part of the country (and my first guess would be out West; but the South is also a possibility).
You may be confusing a street with a block 😜... you get to the end of the block when you reach an intersection. Streets can keep on going past them though
The reason Second Street is most common in the US is in many places what some people may think of as “First Street” is named something else, Main, Broadway, etc…
Also, in America a road a St. a Boulevard an Avenue they are all the same. Those would all be considered a street or even a road they’re interchangeable.
The Goonies are is one of my favorite movies from my childhood. Our streets also go by "road", "avenue", "way", "lane". In fact the alley behind our house is called "Locust Avenue." A lot of times, at least in smaller towns, the house numbers on numbered streets often go in sequence when in between say like between street intersections. The side streets often go 1st. street, 2nd street, 3rd street and so on. The main streets often have names. So what usually happens is the houses have a 3 digit number and once you pass 1st. street, the first house usually goes 100, 101, 102 and so on until it gets to 2nd. street which then starts over at 200, 201, 202 and so on. We often refer to the section between sections as "blocks." So the section between 1st. and 2nd. street would be called the "100 Block", the section between 2nd. street and 3rd street would be the "200 Block" and so on until it gets to the other end or the center of of town. Everything kinda gets more complicated with a town center because the same street can have 2 houses with 400. That's because one house might be, 400 South 1st Street. and once you get past the town center going on the same street in the same direction, eventually you could get to 400 North 13th. Street. The same can happen with east and west depending on how the town is oriented. The center of town usually determines whether a house is on the north end or the south end of town and the same for east or west. If you don't include either north or south when giving your address, if you order something, it could go to the wrong address if someone doesn't know this. The road I live on is called, "Rainbow Run Road".
Having lived in the UK for two years, the main difference in our streets is the room. UK streets are so small and narrow that its hard maneuvering in places. Here where I live in the deep south in the US we have plenty of room, especially compared to the northeast US, and since I drive an 18 wheeler it's just one of many reasons I don't go up there. I do love the UK and will be visiting Manchester and Leeds in March and renting a car and getting back on those narrow roads again. Looking forward to it.
I live on the outskirts of london in Kent and we have lots of narrow lanes we have to drive down , you just get used to it and to be honest I would not change it .
I'm an American currently living in a more rural area of Japan and it's very similar. Most of the streets and roads are very narrow. They're comfy for one car, but they're still two way and when you have oncoming traffic, the margin of error is scarily narrow. It doesn't help that there's no shoulder, and instead there's about a 6 or 7 ft drop down into some farmer's field. Even the main two streets through this town are only two lanes, and you can be waiting a while and holding up traffic if you need to cross the other lane to get to where you want to go. In the big cities, it's a lot more like the US, except every major intersection crosswalk is omnidirectional. All the car traffic stops completely on red lights and you have crosswalks that not only go straight across the road but diagonally across and ALL of them get to go and walk at the same time. Probably the main reason there is no left turn on red with no traffic.
I've lived in cities where they will also name roads/streets based on direction. For example, all streets running north/south will be numbered streets and all east/west streets will have names (and it does seem like 'tree' names are used most often). Kansas City is a good example. Numbered streets run east/west, named streets run north/south. If you're new to a city, this sure does help you get around more quickly. Interstate and highways use numbers to denote direction too. For instance, even numbers will take you east/west (I-70, I-40, I-10), odd numbers will take you north/south (I-95, I-25, I-5).
What I hate most are cities that have multiple versions of streets with the same name - Circle Street, Circle Road, Circle Lane, Circle Boulevard, etc. all within that one city. Plays havoc with people's mail.
All streets have other intersecting streets or culdesac's. That is not what identifies them as a street . Usually it is the Name of the street, and the residential houses on both sides, but also that a "Street" is usually identified as to it's neighborhood. If the neighborhood or area is large it can have a street that runs one mile , to five miles, regardless of how many other streets join into it . The main street in question will maintain the same name the entire length. Oddly in the USA , some cities can also have two streets located in different parts of the city , but with the same name. It isn't common , but it does happen.
Two additional thoughts that may help you organize your thoughts on streets in the US 1- address/street numbers may extend through several cities if the cities are contiguous in a metropolitan area, this reduces the odds of multiple buildings having the same street name/number combination where there are multiple cities that share boundaries. In other places, a county or township may coordinate the numbering system and every town or city would count from the baseline, usually a county or township boundary. 2- naming convention as to "street, road, avenue" etc are not consistent from place to place; where I live all east/west routes are "avenue" and north/south are "street", diagonal streets have their own rules. In other areas names might be based on how big (wide) it is, or how long, or which agency built it. Some have no rhyme or reason at all. You can't just look at a map and take the name for granted, you have to use other cues. And to Millie - a street can extend through many intersections, the important thing is that it is a continuous route (or was when it was built). If you change roads at an intersection the name will normally change, but if you continue along the marked route the name will typically remain consistent.
I lived in Temple Texas. The town was a railroad town and had been laid out like this. From the center of town roads East were Odd and roads were Even (one of those). Roads North of the center were named .. alphabetically .. Abrams, Brown, Candle etc. .. roads South were Avenues .. A, B, C etc. That meant that at any intersection of these roads/streets you would know exactly where you were in town. There were of course other roads that cut across but the laid out system of roads were great.
In my little town, the streets are mostly numbers and they are differentiated by "Street" or "Avenue", so you could actually live at the corner of 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue. I can never remember which runs which direction, as one runs north-south and the other runs east-west. Terribly confusing, but when you are given directions to a house, most of the time you will be told you are looking for the Miller house...and the Millers left the town over 30 years ago.
Streets in the US are easy to navigate until you go to Salt Lake City UT and see an address like 1445 East 400 South and you're not familiar with that. US streets usually don't have 2 directions like SLC.
In other cities, a house number will be based on how many times the street intersects another street. All the houses on "X" Avenue between 1st Street and Second Street will in the 100s. All the houses between 2nd Street and 3rd Street, etc... A house between 28th Street and 29th street will begin at 2901.
Another thing to add that confused me at first or I didn't realize what it meant until I moved to a city in America. Is that it's important to say North/south, east, west etc when you put in the Satnav or gps, or when writing letters/your address, so for example 13th avenue NW. Because one road/street has all of them. My address for example is SE, if I put in my address NE, my mail will go to the wrong address!!
Lebanon PA has an intersection of 7th street and 7th avenue. *** My street address ends with 1. I am on the "odd" side of the street, however my immediate next door neighbor's ends with 8. Yes, some schmuck mistook a 3 for an 8 when transcribing the number. What fun with people trying to find them. Also, my "street" starts in a Town, where it is called Something STREET. When it leaves the Town proper, and enters the Township, it changes to Something ROAD.
I live on 2nd Street North, lol, the most popular road name. My city has a grid system with numbers, the roads that go north/south are "street" the roads that go east/west are "avenues". The main road downtown is called, well... Main Street 🤣🤣🤣. I guess North Dakota is very basic when it comes to road names.
Seattle is a fun one - East/West streets are numbered and called 'Street' with a directional indicator before the number, North/South streets are also numbered but called "Avenue' with the directional after. You can then be standing at the corner of NE 45th St and 45th Ave NE. The numbers and directionals radiate from downtown.
The first time I was in the west I was in the Seattle area. We headed out toward Mt. Rainier and passed a street (or maybe avenue) in the 300s. It was practically the middle of nowhere and I thought, "300 from what?"
I looked up the definition of street to me sure. Laurence’s definition was correct. It did not say anything about intersections. I believe having an intersection does not mean it change it. Laurence did not mention cup de sacs which are found in many suburban subdivisions.
In Minnesota. Usually the streets go east and west and avenues go north and south. And in some places the streets are numbered and the avenues are named.
So a 'road' is anything that connects two points, while 'streets' are public ways which have buildings on either side. Avenues, meanwhile, have the same attributes as streets but run perpendicular to them, while a boulevard is essentially a wide street (or avenue), with a median through the middle
There is a whole section of names that don't even show on those lists. Aside from trees, streets are named after states, presidents, and cities. It can get comical.
Anything a vehicle drives on is a street otherwise it's a freeway. However street names have added descriptions to the end of it; road, drive, avenue, way, court, circle. Busy city streets can be called Boulevard or highway. I just thought that was done so you can have the same street name but then tack on Rd, Dr, Ave, etc so it isn't a duplicate.
I think that Lawrence's definition of "street" is better described as a road that primarily runs through urban and/or suburban (built-up) areas, as opposed to through long stretches of empty countryside. In many cities and towns, streets in the central area are not just numbered, but also lettered. Here in Sacramento, the downtown area is a grid with numbers for the north-south streets, starting at the western edge with 1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street, etc. The east-west streets are lettered, starting at the north edge with A Street, B Street, down to Y street at the southern edge. After Y Street, where Z Street should be, is Broadway (which is a common name for a main street in America), and after that the east-west streets are also numbered, but are called avenues--so 1st Avenue, 2nd Avenue, etc. Outside the central area there are a lot of named streets interspaced, but the numbering also continues (with gaps to maintain the correct east-west or north-south distance). So you can (and we do) have, for example, the intersection of 47th Avenue and 55th Street. The street/avenue numbers are also a guide to house numbers: the buildings on 47th Avenue just past 55th Street will have numbers in the 5500s, up to 56th Street (or, if there isn't a 56th Street, where it would be), when the house numbers jump to the 5600s. Which is another consequence that Lawrence didn't mention: most house numbers aren't used. A standard "block" is long enough for maybe seven or eight properties, and only those properties will have numbers in the 100-number range for that block. Aside from the first houses on the block having "00" and "01" numbers (even on one side, odd on the other), there's no standard method of distributing house numbers within a block (other than being in ascending order, of course). Some city planners will try to set numbers that roughly correspond to the property's position within the block, but it's not an exact science. (I went on Google Maps and pulled up a typical block--between 34th and 35th Streets. The house numbers on one side of the street are 3400, 3418, 3424, 2426, 3438, 3444, 3450, and 3460.) House numbering is controlled by the municipal planning department when the property lots are designated--it's part of the legal description of the property and can't be changed without permission from the authorities. On the other side, there are a number of British street descriptors which are either rare or unknown in the U.S. What in England is a "Crescent" is usually called a "Circle" in the U.S. I've noticed that a short street that dead-ends is often called a "Close" in London; in the U.S. the usual term is "Court." "Mews" is a descriptor that I've never heard in the U.S. And I think it would surprise many Americans to see how many streets don't have descriptors like "Street" or "Road" at all, just names.
Something else not mentioned is that many US streets change names when they change postal zones or cross city/county boundaries. We have several of those in my city.
A lot of neighborhoods are named with a theme in mind. So, there may be streets that are named after presidents and in other they may be named after fruits. It just depends on what the planners decide.
I live in the first residence on my street and it's number 5. There's a wildlife area across the street, so the houses on my relatively short street go 5, 7, 9, 11. Also yes, my street is named after a tree.
The town I grew up in had number First thru 90th. streets vertical and Avenue A, etc... horizontal. Our main street was called Broadway. We do have some named streets reflecting historical figures like Bernardo De Galvez and Pirates Cove.
The problem with Millie's definition of a "Street", at least as far as the US is concerned, is that the distance from one intersection (crossroad / cross street) to another, is what we define as a "Block", so with while we often have streets several dozens of blocks long (often running in a straight line for their entire length, (lined with residential structures) the length of a block is typically 100 meters, or less.
Washington DC has an interesting naming convention for its streets: North-South street are named after a letter of the alphabet East-West streets are numbered Diagonal streets are named after states (ie Pennsylvania Avenue where the White House is located) To confuse things more the city is dividend into 4 quadrants that meet under the US Capitol dome. Street names (and numbers) can be repeated in each quadrant. For example, I work on First Street NE, which is no where near or connected to First Street SE.
4:53 In the United States, (at least in Oklahoma, where I'm at) the terms “street”, “avenue” and “road” are often used interchangeably. While an uninterrupted street is typically referred to as an expressway, however not all expressways are uninterrupted. The only truly uninterrupted roadways are referred to as highways or freeways, and in some regions, they may also be known as toll roads.
In America the words street and road are used almost interchangeably, along with avenue and drive. They each carry different connotations and historical associations, but those are freely ignored or abused by the developers and county planners who choose the names primarily as marketing tools to sell homes and properties along their length.
Here, in our area, Streets run East\West and Avenues run North\South. It is also named by quadrant. SW, SE, NE, NW going out from our city center. All major roadways are named by number extending out from the city center. There is no 1st. 1st is actually Magnolia.
in our town grid, I live south of 11th ave , so our block of house numbers start at 1100 ... same pattern for 1st ave. , 5th ave, etc.... reading an address you can easily figure out the general location.
Yes you can not count because there is intersections think same name of the street with continuous buildings on each side houses or bigger buildings as his definition.
Longest boulevard(Street with a median in the middle) in California is Sepulveda blvd @ 43 miles. The longest street in California is Figueroa st @ 22 miles
Second is first because the first street is often called Main. Plus there might be two seconds. North second and South Second. More often the streets to the North and South of main are the trees and colleges and people and such and the streets to the E and W (running N/S) are west 2nd and E 2nd and W 3rd and E 3rd. Or similar arrangement. They key is that of you know the center, it is easy to know where an address is on the grid. There are other systems. Seattle's grid now extends out across the county for 60 miles and streets and avenues are the same with one running N/S and the other E/W. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_layout_of_Seattle
The word "road" is fairly general. The best definition I can come up with off the top of my head is a long and skinny, publicly owned piece of transportation infrastructure intended for cars to drive on it. Long and skinny rules out parking lots, publicly owned rules out most driveways, and intended for cars rules out airport runways and tarmac, railroad tracks, and hiking trails, among other things. This definition isn't quite perfect, because it doesn't correctly handle things like the driveways of public buildings. But it's reasonably close. There are various kinds roads, the most important of which are streets, country roads, and highways. A "street" is a road that is located in a settled community (city, village, or unincorporated community); streets are usually flanked by buildings but can also run through a city park or over or under a bridge and still be a street, provided it's still in town. A "highway" is a road that is intended for longer distance travel; and a "country road" is a road intended for mostly local traffic but not located inside a town. There are a number of even more specific terms, e.g., a "boulevard" is a street that has an unpaved area running down the middle with plants (usually grass, sometimes trees) growing in it, which has gaps at each intersection. A "divided highway" also has an unpaved area running down the middle, but it usually does not break at intersections (because divided highways are almost always limited access). A "limited access" highway is one that uses entrance and exit ramps in lieu of intersections. An "interstate" is a very specific type of high-quality limited access divided highway maintained by the federal government. A "turnpike" is a limited access divided highway that charges tolls; whereas, a "freeway" is a highway that does not charge tolls. Roads can also be categorized by which level of government is responsible for maintaining them: US highways, as well as the aforementioned interstates, are maintained by the federal government; state highways are the responsibility of the state's department of transportation; county roads, township roads, and finally streets are each maintained by a progressively more local government agency, and finally we arrive at driveways, which are maintained by whoever is responsible for the specific facility (building or campus) to which the driveway belongs.
Western Ave is super long and has stuff all along it. Traveled the length from Evanston at the IHOP to the end which was a bit ambiguous once. Took hours.
Broadway, also designated as Route 9, goes from the southern tip of Manhattan to Montreal in Canada. Originally a native Indian trail . French fur trappers located in Montreal used the trail for trading beaver pelts captured by local Indian tribes. Early Dutch settlers named this trail Broadway about 1626.
I think road refers to countryside roads and streets are what you find in town. our longest continuous street in my area is seven miles, our longest road is 16 miles.
Remember. Many of the roads and infrastructure in the US was built at the time the automobile was invented. Especially out west. The majority of roads Europe have been around since Roman times.
Here is what the standard is suppose to be for road types, though many roads are not properly labeled or carry a label that applied when it was originally planned/built but no longer applies after future development, and different cities/municipalities may have different official standards for naming road types: Road - Anything that connects two points (all of the following are types of road) Way - A side street off a road. Street - A public way with buildings on both sides. Avenue - The same as a street but build perpendicular to them (if the street is north-south, the avenue should be east-west) Boulevard - A wide street in a city with a median in the middle. Lane - A narrow road. Drive - A winding road that has its route shaped by natural features such as a lake or mountain. Terrace - A road that runs along the top of a slope. Place - A road with no throughway. Court - A road with no throughway that ends in a loop or cul-de-sac. Circle - A road with no throughway, containing a closed loop beginning and ending at intersections with the same street, or where the looped street closes onto itself. Crescent - A winding, curved road that typically attaches to another road at each end Plaza or Square - An open public space that's surrounded by businesses or streets. in most cities, there are roads that should be boulevards that are called a different road type, usually because they weren't originally boulevards, many "Lanes" are expanded into a street/avenue/way later on but keep their "Lane" name, and some places, courts, & circles will have throughways added later.
He missed saying that addresses typically skip numbers between houses... one side of the street you'll have 2400, next door will be 2404, then 2408, 2412, the opposite side will be 2401, then 2405, 2409, 2413. We also have small counties, so Kansas City, Missouri has 9 counties and Kansas City, Kansas has 5 counties, and street names typically change as you switch counties... example it may be Pecan St. in one county and as you enter another county the street name may change to Ragan Rd.. Another thing that he touched on, the downtown streets of a city are grid like, but residential areas tend to be more curvy and circles and culdesacs rather than straight grid like layout.
In the UK at least: A "Street" usually has buildings on one or both sides A "Lane" is usually narrow, and winding A "Drive" is usually private, giving access to a small group of houses or structures A "Mews" is a row of houses that have been converted from, or built to look like, stables. An "Avenue" typically has trees at regular intervals along its sides A "Way" is a small side street that turns off another street A "Close" or "Place" is usually a street with a dead-end, or cul-de-sac A "Court" is a residential street with a dead-end, like a "Close" or "Place", but usually ends in a circle or loop An "Alley" is a small pathway between buildings, sometimes driveable, but usually not A "Terrace" is a residential street that follows the top of a slope And finally, a "Road", is a way that connects two points. In other words, a "Road" is the general catch-all term for all of them. A Street is a _type_ of Road. A Lane is another _type_ of Road, and so on. "What is the difference between a Street and a Road?" is like asking "What is the difference between an apple, and a fruit?".
I'm sure this is a repeat, but typically addresses are by block and not by miles from center. There's a center point, and 0-999 is from there to the end of the block (often 1st St/Ave) and so on. So, if you lived on Main St at the corner of 25th Ave, then your address would be close to 2500 Main St. I live in South Florida and it's even a little more structured. Streets go East/West and Avenues go North/South and they are numbered going out from a central crosshairs. So, if you lived at 2300 NE 2nd Ave, Then you are in the NE corner of town, 2 blocks east of the central avenue and 23 blocks north of the central street, roughly on the corner of NE 2nd Ave and NE 23rd St. Of course, no one needs to know how that works, but if you take the time to understand it, then it makes getting around a lot easier.
Street with the same name as continuous is the same street whether it has intersections or not. So if James Street goes from the North to the South of Chicago and it's still James street in the South of Chicago, it's one street.
In the US, there are general rules that most cities follow when naming trafficways. Road: any route that connects two points, paved or unpaved. Way: a type of side street. Street: a paved road with buildings on both sides. Avenue: a street that crosses other streets at a ninety degree angle. Boulevard: a wide street with a center stripe or a median in the middle. Lane: a narrow road or street. Drive: a winding road that has its route shaped by natural features such as a lake or mountain. Terrace: a road that runs along the top of a slope. Place: a road with no throughway. Court: a road with no throughway that ends in a loop or cul-de-sac. Those are rules of thumb; you'll always find exceptions. Numbering: There are times when buildings will have single digit addresses, but it's normally on courts and places where the road is short. City blocks are numbered from central north-south and east-west streets, and begin at 100. In other words, we might have an east-west route called Main Street, crossed by a north-south one called Center Avenue. The blocks on either side of Center Avenue will be 100 East and 100 West, and the next two blocks will be 200 East and 200 West. They go up from there, so it's easy to see how it would get into the thousands -- in my example, the 1000 block of Main Street would just be ten blocks away from Center Avenue. The numbering only extends to the city limits. If a particular street continues on into a bordering city, the numbers change to reflect how far away from their main streets you are as soon as you cross the border. In California's San Fernando Valley, there's a street called Glenoaks Boulevard that runs 22.4 miles. It passes through more than five cities, so the address number sequences change fairly frequently. As with British numbering, addresses will be even numbers on the south and east sides of the street and odd numbers on the north and west sides.
Another thing to think about, is a lot of house numbers will also go by the miles from a center point of a city or major street. same as numbered freeway exits start at a state border. Im at exit 55, and its 55 miles to the boarder of california.
Millie seems to be confusing a block (as we would call it in America) and a street. 5th Ave in Manhattan is a street,. 5th Avenue between 57th and 56th streets is a block. I've never lived in or near a city with a zero point address numbering. Most places I have lived are either (like the UK) start at 1 and go up, or based on cross streets - if your home is between 92nd and 93rd St. your address begins with 92 (9201, 9202, etc..) Next block is 93XX homes, etc.
I you think Streets are confusing, remember we drive on the Parkway and park on the Driveway. In Birmingham, Al the house number is based on the intersecting Avenue or Street. 1st Avenue starts at Division Street and runs to 90th Street. 9000, 9001, 9002 etc. First Avenue is based on 90th Street. 7800, 7801, 7802 etc. First Avenue would be based on 78th Street.
The city I grew up in, Main St. Changed into High St. at the town square with both being business and residential properties. I grew up on a corner lot. The front faced Fairlawn Ave. and our driveway was on oak St. Elm St. ran parallel to Oak St. There was also a Maple St. Years later I moved and that city had a few blocks named after Presidents. Some of my family lives in California and they have streets named after letters like "M St."
My house number is 11381... It's a 'county number', which was numbered based on location in the county, not the city. When the city I live in was incorporated in the 1970's, it kept the county numbering. My closest numbered street is 4800 West, even though a mile to the east there are mountains. Again, the county addresses are centered somewhere south-southeast of my house...
Portland Oregon organizes streets going east to west, avenues north to south. Avenues tend to be numbered, but not always, and streets have names. You can tell how far a destination is from the North/South divider (Burnside) or the East/West divider (Interstate 5 or the Willamette River) because each intersection increases the building/house number by 100. Example: 724 is after the 7th street or avenue, 14235 is after the 142nd street/avenue intersection. Odds on one side, evens on the other. NW/SW/NE/SE/N/S divides the city into 6 sections. Lots of street names are Simpsons characters: (Reverend) Lovejoy, (Sideshow Bob) Pettygrove, (Mayor) Quimby, (Ned) Flanders, etc.
I live in South Florida, where the streets generally follow the grid pattern wherever possible (where not interrupted by a lake or river or canal or pond), and the house/building numbering system is tied to the street the building is on and where in the street numberingit falls. SOme streets are miles long. Whether or not they are physically interrupted by an obstacle, the numbering will still pick up where it continues, according to the nearest cross street. Take, for example, houses on a fictional 49th Avenue. The ones between 25 Street & 26th Street would have numbers in the 2500s, as they would be in the 2500 block (after 25th St. but before 26th St). The last two numbers change for the individual buildings, so in that block you might have 2510, 2520, 2530 and so forth on one side, and the opposite side might be 2505, 2515, 2525, 2535, etc. The ones on the next block (starting at cross street 26th St.) would be in the 2600 block, and so have numbers in the 2600s. Odd numbers are on one side of the road and even numbers on the opposite side. If you go much farther up the same road, 49th Avenue, to say 184th Street, all of the buildings starting at that cross street would be in the 18400 block. The next block, starting at the next cross street of 185th St., numbers will be in the 18500 block. The building number of my local grocery is 18409 because it is on the odd-numbered side of the street in a strip shopping center that begins at the corner of cross street 184th Avenue (and yes, here the numbering system does start at 1 (First Street) and go out in every direction by single number increments. By every direction I mean zero would be at First Street & First Avenue. Going north from there you would have 2nd St, 3rd St, and so on and the same going south, with Avenues as the cross streets. Going east and west the same numbering system but the road names will be Avenues with Streets as their cross streets. So you go out in each direction so the street numbering system ends up in quadrants NE, NW, SE & SW. You can conceivably have houses at 2601 NE 4th Street, another at 2601 SE 4th Street, another at 2601 NW 4th Street and a fourth at 2601 NE 4th Street. The same with Avenues. You can basically look at most addresses here and narrow down pretty well in your mind exactly where it is located without having to look at a map. The fly in the ointment is the City of Coral Gables, which named all of its streets Spanish names instead of numbering them. For those you'll need to consult a map. 😲
Where I’m from in Washington, the first part of your address is the cross street to the north. The second part is the house number. So if you’re address is 35620, 12th Avenue, it means you live in house number 20 on 12th avenue south of 356th street (or between 356th and 357th).
In Commiefornie, we have developments named after citrus trees, Movie stars movies. Like Audie Murphy's films. Destry, Audie Murphy Way. Soon we will name them after homeless camps!
In us their 10 blocks to the mile so if your address starts 26 then your 2.6 miles from center all other streets in that radius all start with 26 north south east or west so you can always gauge how far everything is from you
Almost everything in our small town is a street no matter what they run into or how the end. There are a couple of lanes, a road, an Avenue, and a Drive in our town. We have two highways intersecting in our town and we just added our 5th traffic light! Yeehaw!😂😂Most of our Roads are out of town.😊
The first time I came over to the UK, I spent over an hour trying to find the road signs (they're not stuck up on poles - lol!). I was also shocked at how many American fast food places were available.
Yeah just because Street has an intersection doesn’t mean it’s not a street. In fact most streets have intersections. The example he gave in Aberdeen has intersections it’s not 2 miles of street with no cross-streets. Lawrence’s definition said that a street is must have buildings on both sides for the entire run for to be counted in his how long is a street evaluation (names aside because they are assigned randomly and often persist after the character of the area has changed i.e. it gets built up). By that Definition Western Avenue is most definitely a street there are buildings on both sides of that street for all 27 miles.
Generally in the u.s. street is generic for anything that you drive a vehicle on.. It may be named boulevard avenue road highway interstate or street, but generically they're all streets.
If I'm giving someone direction's or using an address, I call it what it's named. But if I'm in downtown Nashville, my hometown, and someone asked me where Broadway is I might say it's three streets over.
None of the roads that you have to cross to get there are named street, they're all named avenue, but I'm not going to say it's three avenues in that direction.
@@KarenCatMom2 in my experience, street is usually reserved for roads inside cities. Road is used multiply ways. As general term (as in the first sentence). For larger "streets", frequently with less access. Roads outside of cities. And probably a few others that I can't think of at the moment.
@@johnbennett1465 I had the same thought about distinguishing a street vs. a road.
A “street” is *always* in a city or a town. It implies there are other streets parallel to it, within the same city or town.
A “road” usually runs through a town, continuing beyond the city/town limits - or at least, beyond the boundaries in place when the road was named. (In many metropolitan areas, towns and cities have expanded so far that they border each other. Without signage, it can be hard to tell exactly where one suburb merges into the next.)
A “highway” extends through a series of cities, possibly even crossing multiple states.
Within a city, some streets may be named “street,” “avenue,” “boulevard,” “lane,” or any number of other labels. But “street” would be the generic term.
In the Nashville example given above, I would say that Broadway is “three blocks over”, i.e. it’s the third street the visitor would cross by walking in the designated direction…or, the visitor would have to walk along one side of each of three city blocks before reaching Broadway.
I hope this is helpful @The Beesleys 💐
All streets in the continental US have at least one intersection, and all streets longer than one block, have multiple intersections.
To find a street with no intersections, you'd have to go someplace extremely remote that is not connected to any road networks and only has one street in the entire community. It would probably either be on a coral atoll, or in one of the polar regions, and good luck finding one that's continuously flanked by buildings.
In the U.S., "street" is a general term for almost any route of public access, almost always to drive on (we have only a handful of pedestrian streets, which we call pedestrian "malls"). These can be any length.
A "block" is any section of a street between two cross-streets, which in Britain seems to be what you call a "street".
Our streets are named or numbered and can be followed by an endless number "category" terms. These include "street" and "avenue" (the most common), as well as "boulevard", "lane", "road", "court", "place", etc. There is no real distinguishing feature/reason for the use of the categories. Those that are not labeled street or avenue are designated for charm...making the name and neighborhood appear more quaint.
"Highway" is typically only used for major roads that are numbered as part of the national, state, or county highway systems.
We also have a large number of service alleys that run at the backs of the property lots between two streets. These are rarely named and are used primarily for garbage collection, utilities, and sometimes for access to garages located at the back of a property.
Love your videos! I look forward to more.
From one intersection to one intersection is a block. So a real “street” will have intersections.
Like many others, my American suburban neighborhood has short streets with unnecessary curves. This (in theory) encourages people to drive more slowly and helps to prevent the neighborhood from seeming urban. We have quite the variety of words given to describe the streets. Mine is called a "road." Others are called "drive," "street," "avenue," "boulevard," "way," "crescent," "court," and "circle." I suppose the plat (estate) developers just liked the variety.
Here is what the standard is suppose to be, though many roads are not properly labeled or carry a label that applied when it was originally planned/built but no longer applies after future development, and different cities/municipalities may have different official standards for naming road types:
Road - Anything that connects two points (all of the following are types of road)
Way - A side street off a road.
Street - A public way with buildings on both sides.
Avenue - The same as a street but build perpendicular to them (if the street is north-south, the avenue should be east-west)
Boulevard - A wide street in a city with a median in the middle.
Lane - A narrow road.
Drive - A winding road that has its route shaped by natural features such as a lake or mountain.
Terrace - A road that runs along the top of a slope.
Place - A road with no throughway.
Court - A road with no throughway that ends in a loop or cul-de-sac.
Circle - A road with no throughway, containing a closed loop beginning and ending at intersections with the same street, or where the looped street closes onto itself.
Crescent - A winding, curved road that typically attaches to another road at each end
Plaza or Square - An open public space that's surrounded by businesses or streets.
in most cities, there are roads that should be boulevards that are called a different road type, usually because they weren't originally boulevards, many "Lanes" are expanded into a street/avenue/way later on but keep their "lane" name, and some places, courts, & circles will have throughways added later.
I was told by a resident of a suburb that the roads are all bent to keep non-residents from using the 'burb as a shortcut.
@JPMadden If you ever wanted to see US city street naming at its worst, lookup up Hickory, NC. Despite being in the Appalachian foothills, there was a failed attempt at a grid system. There are some straightline streets through town but not many. The primary streets are labeled numerically with suffix Avenue for "horizontal" & Street for "vertical" & an ordinal direction NE, NW, SE, SW after Ave or St. As for secondary streets, they can be just short one or two block street segments connecting other streets, long curved &/or winding including compass directional changes. Secondary streets are also named numerically but have a double suffix & an ordination. Such as 8th Ave Dr SE, 10th St Pl NW. Secondary street numeric name & first suffix are an attempt to relate that secondary street is off of or nearest to the primary street of same number & suffix. But with naturally hilly topography, natural barriers (lakes, rivers, creeks, steep hills) the Primary street numbers don't make sense let alone Secondary streets. To make matters worse, street names will change without turning off the street. So that's the number, primary suffix, secondary suffix (if a secondary street), & ordinal direction all change in an eye blink. This same naming convention exists inside the winding streets & loops of planned development (planned neighborhoods, condo & apartment complexes, & commercial/industrial complexes).
@@1776SOL Crazy. They should start from scratch and rename everything.
I understand your confusion. I moved to Queens, in NYC. My friend said he lives close by, just off 99th St at 63rd. One day I figured I stop by. It's a 1 km walk. 63rd Drive, Avenue, and Road all crossed 99th. His guitar shop was at 63rd and 98th. There was 98th Place and 98th Street. All the addresses were in the 4 digits divided in half with a dash 98-00 and so forth. I gave up and went home. Add to that my train stop is Woodhaven Blvd. Not to be confused with the Woodhaven Blvd station on the other side of a huge forested area, which I thought was Brooklyn but is still Queens until you cross the street, or road, or Blvd. It's taken me over a year not to get lost going around the corner
One of the biggest differences between a street, and a road is that pedestrians typically have more rights on a street and streets typically serve more as a common space, rather than a means of transport, whereas pedestrians typically have far less rights on a road, as there primary function is to get vehicles from point a to point b.
The US has streets, avenues, boulevards, lanes, ways, plaza, terraces, places, courts, and several more so confusion is understandable.
I live on a farm and was raised in the country. We call city streets and country roads. Keeps things easier
Also, as someone who grew up in the suburbs of NYC (in New Jersey), some streets have numbers that start over when you cross into a new town even though it’s still the same street. 🤷♀️
I live near a street that is in one city and four boroughs (in Pennsylvania): California Avenue, Lincoln Avenue, California Avenue, Church Avenue, and Center Avenue.
Another one nearby is W 7th Avenue, E 8th Avenue, River Road,, Kennywood Boulevard, Duquesne Boulevard, Duquesne Road, Dravosburg Road, Washington Avenue, and Clairon-Dravosburg Road.
Yonge Street in Toronto is recognized as the longest street in the world - it's 56 km (35 miles) long, and runs the entire vertical length of the city.
If you want a street, nonstop, without intersections, then jump on any freeway (except rush hour) you can drive hundreds, sometimes a thousand miles+.
The American English dictionary (Webster's Third New International) essentially defines a "road" as a path that travels between two places of distinct names, and a "street" as a path constrained within the limits of a single named place. Additionally, the street is broader than an alley and narrower than an avenue. This seems to disregard the number, type, or regularity of structures abutting the path. The "street" of my residence is confined within the boundaries of my neighborhood and the city, but the "road" abutted by my local Wal-mart passes between two neighborhoods within the boundaries of the city.
I had to look this up, because even though ive been here all my life, it can still be confusing. Heres what i found. So a 'road' is anything that connects two points, while 'streets' are public ways which have buildings on either side. Avenues, meanwhile, have the same attributes as streets but run perpendicular to them, while a boulevard is essentially a wide street (or avenue), with a median through the middle
I tend to think of streets as being in the city and roads as being out of the city.
I’ve never known how it is decided if something is a Street, Road, Lane, Avenue, etc
I'm stunned that "Market Street" does not appear on either of the top ten U.S. lists. In my area of the country, I believe Market is probably the second most common street name behind only Main. Many smaller towns and villages don't really have enough streets to warrant having to use a numbering system, but they nearly all have a Main and a Market Street.
That surprised me too; Market Street is nearly universal in the Midwest. Main street often gets renamed to something else, e.g., in Galion it got renamed to Harding Way (long story involving local politics, but it happened when the Lincoln Highway moved its official route to not go through the middle of every single town, because people no longer wanted to stop for the night every eleven miles after buying cars that go faster than horses). In other communities I've lived in, the main drag has been called State Street (Hastings, MI), Kings Highway (Winona Lake, IN), Cherry Street (Canal Fulton, OH). But yeah, all but one of these communities has a Market Street, and probably the only reason Winona Lake doesn't, is because it would be confusing and redundant. (Market Street in neighboring Warsaw is literally only four blocks away from Kings Highway in Winona Lake.) The fact that Market Street doesn't show up in the top ten, suggests to me that it's far less common in another part of the country (and my first guess would be out West; but the South is also a possibility).
@13:33 That look on your faces. Had me dying laughing. Millie looked like she had a hard mental reset. Keep up the good work guys!
I have always used road and street interchangeably but you’re definition totally makes sense to me.
You may be confusing a street with a block 😜... you get to the end of the block when you reach an intersection. Streets can keep on going past them though
The reason Second Street is most common in the US is in many places what some people may think of as “First Street” is named something else, Main, Broadway, etc…
Also, in America a road a St. a Boulevard an Avenue they are all the same. Those would all be considered a street or even a road they’re interchangeable.
The Goonies are is one of my favorite movies from my childhood. Our streets also go by "road", "avenue", "way", "lane". In fact the alley behind our house is called "Locust Avenue." A lot of times, at least in smaller towns, the house numbers on numbered streets often go in sequence when in between say like between street intersections. The side streets often go 1st. street, 2nd street, 3rd street and so on. The main streets often have names. So what usually happens is the houses have a 3 digit number and once you pass 1st. street, the first house usually goes 100, 101, 102 and so on until it gets to 2nd. street which then starts over at 200, 201, 202 and so on. We often refer to the section between sections as "blocks." So the section between 1st. and 2nd. street would be called the "100 Block", the section between 2nd. street and 3rd street would be the "200 Block" and so on until it gets to the other end or the center of of town. Everything kinda gets more complicated with a town center because the same street can have 2 houses with 400. That's because one house might be, 400 South 1st Street. and once you get past the town center going on the same street in the same direction, eventually you could get to 400 North 13th. Street. The same can happen with east and west depending on how the town is oriented. The center of town usually determines whether a house is on the north end or the south end of town and the same for east or west. If you don't include either north or south when giving your address, if you order something, it could go to the wrong address if someone doesn't know this. The road I live on is called, "Rainbow Run Road".
Having lived in the UK for two years, the main difference in our streets is the room. UK streets are so small and narrow that its hard maneuvering in places. Here where I live in the deep south in the US we have plenty of room, especially compared to the northeast US, and since I drive an 18 wheeler it's just one of many reasons I don't go up there. I do love the UK and will be visiting Manchester and Leeds in March and renting a car and getting back on those narrow roads again. Looking forward to it.
I live on the outskirts of london in Kent and we have lots of narrow lanes we have to drive down , you just get used to it and to be honest I would not change it .
I'm an American currently living in a more rural area of Japan and it's very similar. Most of the streets and roads are very narrow. They're comfy for one car, but they're still two way and when you have oncoming traffic, the margin of error is scarily narrow. It doesn't help that there's no shoulder, and instead there's about a 6 or 7 ft drop down into some farmer's field. Even the main two streets through this town are only two lanes, and you can be waiting a while and holding up traffic if you need to cross the other lane to get to where you want to go. In the big cities, it's a lot more like the US, except every major intersection crosswalk is omnidirectional. All the car traffic stops completely on red lights and you have crosswalks that not only go straight across the road but diagonally across and ALL of them get to go and walk at the same time. Probably the main reason there is no left turn on red with no traffic.
Millie is describing a block I think. One street can have many blocks
I've lived in cities where they will also name roads/streets based on direction. For example, all streets running north/south will be numbered streets and all east/west streets will have names (and it does seem like 'tree' names are used most often). Kansas City is a good example. Numbered streets run east/west, named streets run north/south. If you're new to a city, this sure does help you get around more quickly. Interstate and highways use numbers to denote direction too. For instance, even numbers will take you east/west (I-70, I-40, I-10), odd numbers will take you north/south (I-95, I-25, I-5).
What I hate most are cities that have multiple versions of streets with the same name - Circle Street, Circle Road, Circle Lane, Circle Boulevard, etc. all within that one city. Plays havoc with people's mail.
The classic definition of a street is a public way with buildings along each side
All streets have other intersecting streets or culdesac's. That is not what identifies them as a street . Usually it is the Name of the street, and the residential houses on both sides, but also that a "Street" is usually identified as to it's neighborhood. If the neighborhood or area is large it can have a street that runs one mile , to five miles, regardless of how many other streets join into it . The main street in question will maintain the same name the entire length.
Oddly in the USA , some cities can also have two streets located in different parts of the city , but with the same name. It isn't common , but it does happen.
Two additional thoughts that may help you organize your thoughts on streets in the US
1- address/street numbers may extend through several cities if the cities are contiguous in a metropolitan area, this reduces the odds of multiple buildings having the same street name/number combination where there are multiple cities that share boundaries. In other places, a county or township may coordinate the numbering system and every town or city would count from the baseline, usually a county or township boundary.
2- naming convention as to "street, road, avenue" etc are not consistent from place to place; where I live all east/west routes are "avenue" and north/south are "street", diagonal streets have their own rules. In other areas names might be based on how big (wide) it is, or how long, or which agency built it. Some have no rhyme or reason at all. You can't just look at a map and take the name for granted, you have to use other cues.
And to Millie - a street can extend through many intersections, the important thing is that it is a continuous route (or was when it was built). If you change roads at an intersection the name will normally change, but if you continue along the marked route the name will typically remain consistent.
I lived in Temple Texas. The town was a railroad town and had been laid out like this. From the center of town roads East were Odd and roads were Even (one of those). Roads North of the center were named .. alphabetically .. Abrams, Brown, Candle etc. .. roads South were Avenues .. A, B, C etc. That meant that at any intersection of these roads/streets you would know exactly where you were in town. There were of course other roads that cut across but the laid out system of roads were great.
In my little town, the streets are mostly numbers and they are differentiated by "Street" or "Avenue", so you could actually live at the corner of 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue. I can never remember which runs which direction, as one runs north-south and the other runs east-west. Terribly confusing, but when you are given directions to a house, most of the time you will be told you are looking for the Miller house...and the Millers left the town over 30 years ago.
Usually streets run north-south and avenues run east-west, but there's exceptions I'm sure.
@@Bargle5 Knowing my town, I'm sure they did it wrong!!
Streets in the US are easy to navigate until you go to Salt Lake City UT and see an address like 1445 East 400 South and you're not familiar with that. US streets usually don't have 2 directions like SLC.
In other cities, a house number will be based on how many times the street intersects another street. All the houses on "X" Avenue between 1st Street and Second Street will in the 100s. All the houses between 2nd Street and 3rd Street, etc... A house between 28th Street and 29th street will begin at 2901.
Another thing to add that confused me at first or I didn't realize what it meant until I moved to a city in America. Is that it's important to say North/south, east, west etc when you put in the Satnav or gps, or when writing letters/your address, so for example 13th avenue NW. Because one road/street has all of them. My address for example is SE, if I put in my address NE, my mail will go to the wrong address!!
Lebanon PA has an intersection of 7th street and 7th avenue. *** My street address ends with 1. I am on the "odd" side of the street, however my immediate next door neighbor's ends with 8. Yes, some schmuck mistook a 3 for an 8 when transcribing the number. What fun with people trying to find them. Also, my "street" starts in a Town, where it is called Something STREET. When it leaves the Town proper, and enters the Township, it changes to Something ROAD.
I live on 2nd Street North, lol, the most popular road name. My city has a grid system with numbers, the roads that go north/south are "street" the roads that go east/west are "avenues". The main road downtown is called, well... Main Street 🤣🤣🤣. I guess North Dakota is very basic when it comes to road names.
Seattle is a fun one - East/West streets are numbered and called 'Street' with a directional indicator before the number, North/South streets are also numbered but called "Avenue' with the directional after. You can then be standing at the corner of NE 45th St and 45th Ave NE. The numbers and directionals radiate from downtown.
The first time I was in the west I was in the Seattle area. We headed out toward Mt. Rainier and passed a street (or maybe avenue) in the 300s. It was practically the middle of nowhere and I thought, "300 from what?"
Millie’s confusing a “street” with a “block”. From one intersection or crossing street to the next is a “block”.
In my state the cities have streets and towns have roads.
Road and street are synonyms.
We have streets that have many, many intersections, that doesn't stop it from being a street.
I looked up the definition of street to me sure. Laurence’s definition was correct. It did not say anything about intersections. I believe having an intersection does not mean it change it. Laurence did not mention cup de sacs which are found in many suburban subdivisions.
In Minnesota. Usually the streets go east and west and avenues go north and south. And in some places the streets are numbered and the avenues are named.
So a 'road' is anything that connects two points, while 'streets' are public ways which have buildings on either side. Avenues, meanwhile, have the same attributes as streets but run perpendicular to them, while a boulevard is essentially a wide street (or avenue), with a median through the middle
There is a whole section of names that don't even show on those lists. Aside from trees, streets are named after states, presidents, and cities. It can get comical.
Martin Luther King (MKL) Boulevard (BLVD) super common in most cities as well
Anything a vehicle drives on is a street otherwise it's a freeway. However street names have added descriptions to the end of it; road, drive, avenue, way, court, circle. Busy city streets can be called Boulevard or highway. I just thought that was done so you can have the same street name but then tack on Rd, Dr, Ave, etc so it isn't a duplicate.
I think that Lawrence's definition of "street" is better described as a road that primarily runs through urban and/or suburban (built-up) areas, as opposed to through long stretches of empty countryside.
In many cities and towns, streets in the central area are not just numbered, but also lettered. Here in Sacramento, the downtown area is a grid with numbers for the north-south streets, starting at the western edge with 1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street, etc. The east-west streets are lettered, starting at the north edge with A Street, B Street, down to Y street at the southern edge. After Y Street, where Z Street should be, is Broadway (which is a common name for a main street in America), and after that the east-west streets are also numbered, but are called avenues--so 1st Avenue, 2nd Avenue, etc. Outside the central area there are a lot of named streets interspaced, but the numbering also continues (with gaps to maintain the correct east-west or north-south distance). So you can (and we do) have, for example, the intersection of 47th Avenue and 55th Street.
The street/avenue numbers are also a guide to house numbers: the buildings on 47th Avenue just past 55th Street will have numbers in the 5500s, up to 56th Street (or, if there isn't a 56th Street, where it would be), when the house numbers jump to the 5600s. Which is another consequence that Lawrence didn't mention: most house numbers aren't used. A standard "block" is long enough for maybe seven or eight properties, and only those properties will have numbers in the 100-number range for that block. Aside from the first houses on the block having "00" and "01" numbers (even on one side, odd on the other), there's no standard method of distributing house numbers within a block (other than being in ascending order, of course). Some city planners will try to set numbers that roughly correspond to the property's position within the block, but it's not an exact science. (I went on Google Maps and pulled up a typical block--between 34th and 35th Streets. The house numbers on one side of the street are 3400, 3418, 3424, 2426, 3438, 3444, 3450, and 3460.) House numbering is controlled by the municipal planning department when the property lots are designated--it's part of the legal description of the property and can't be changed without permission from the authorities.
On the other side, there are a number of British street descriptors which are either rare or unknown in the U.S. What in England is a "Crescent" is usually called a "Circle" in the U.S. I've noticed that a short street that dead-ends is often called a "Close" in London; in the U.S. the usual term is "Court." "Mews" is a descriptor that I've never heard in the U.S. And I think it would surprise many Americans to see how many streets don't have descriptors like "Street" or "Road" at all, just names.
Streets are usually considered something urban, while roads are considered more rural.
Most of Oregon's cities have streets that are numbered heading North and South and names for those that go East and West.
Something else not mentioned is that many US streets change names when they change postal zones or cross city/county boundaries. We have several of those in my city.
A lot of neighborhoods are named with a theme in mind. So, there may be streets that are named after presidents and in other they may be named after fruits. It just depends on what the planners decide.
My neighborhood is named after Native Americans .
I live in the first residence on my street and it's number 5. There's a wildlife area across the street, so the houses on my relatively short street go 5, 7, 9, 11.
Also yes, my street is named after a tree.
The town I grew up in had number First thru 90th. streets vertical and Avenue A, etc... horizontal. Our main street was called Broadway. We do have some named streets reflecting historical figures like Bernardo De Galvez and Pirates Cove.
The problem with Millie's definition of a "Street", at least as far as the US is concerned,
is that the distance from one intersection (crossroad / cross street) to another, is what we define as a "Block",
so with while we often have streets several dozens of blocks long (often running in a straight line for their entire length,
(lined with residential structures)
the length of a block is typically 100 meters, or less.
Washington DC has an interesting naming convention for its streets:
North-South street are named after a letter of the alphabet
East-West streets are numbered
Diagonal streets are named after states (ie Pennsylvania Avenue where the White House is located)
To confuse things more the city is dividend into 4 quadrants that meet under the US Capitol dome. Street names (and numbers) can be repeated in each quadrant. For example, I work on First Street NE, which is no where near or connected to First Street SE.
Asphalt Driving Strip In-Town: Street
Asphalt Driving Strip in the Country: Road
Works for me, anyway.
4:53 In the United States, (at least in Oklahoma, where I'm at) the terms “street”, “avenue” and “road” are often used interchangeably. While an uninterrupted street is typically referred to as an expressway, however not all expressways are uninterrupted. The only truly uninterrupted roadways are referred to as highways or freeways, and in some regions, they may also be known as toll roads.
In America the words street and road are used almost interchangeably, along with avenue and drive. They each carry different connotations and historical associations, but those are freely ignored or abused by the developers and county planners who choose the names primarily as marketing tools to sell homes and properties along their length.
Here, in our area, Streets run East\West and Avenues run North\South. It is also named by quadrant. SW, SE, NE, NW going out from our city center. All major roadways are named by number extending out from the city center. There is no 1st. 1st is actually Magnolia.
in our town grid, I live south of 11th ave , so our block of house numbers start at 1100 ... same pattern for 1st ave. , 5th ave, etc.... reading an address you can easily figure out the general location.
If the existence of intersections cut off a street's length as you suggest, the longest street in Chicago would be one block long.
Yes you can not count because there is intersections think same name of the street with continuous buildings on each side houses or bigger buildings as his definition.
Longest boulevard(Street with a median in the middle) in California is Sepulveda blvd @ 43 miles. The longest street in California is Figueroa st @ 22 miles
Second is first because the first street is often called Main. Plus there might be two seconds. North second and South Second. More often the streets to the North and South of main are the trees and colleges and people and such and the streets to the E and W (running N/S) are west 2nd and E 2nd and W 3rd and E 3rd. Or similar arrangement. They key is that of you know the center, it is easy to know where an address is on the grid.
There are other systems. Seattle's grid now extends out across the county for 60 miles and streets and avenues are the same with one running N/S and the other E/W. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_layout_of_Seattle
The word "road" is fairly general. The best definition I can come up with off the top of my head is a long and skinny, publicly owned piece of transportation infrastructure intended for cars to drive on it. Long and skinny rules out parking lots, publicly owned rules out most driveways, and intended for cars rules out airport runways and tarmac, railroad tracks, and hiking trails, among other things. This definition isn't quite perfect, because it doesn't correctly handle things like the driveways of public buildings. But it's reasonably close.
There are various kinds roads, the most important of which are streets, country roads, and highways. A "street" is a road that is located in a settled community (city, village, or unincorporated community); streets are usually flanked by buildings but can also run through a city park or over or under a bridge and still be a street, provided it's still in town. A "highway" is a road that is intended for longer distance travel; and a "country road" is a road intended for mostly local traffic but not located inside a town. There are a number of even more specific terms, e.g., a "boulevard" is a street that has an unpaved area running down the middle with plants (usually grass, sometimes trees) growing in it, which has gaps at each intersection. A "divided highway" also has an unpaved area running down the middle, but it usually does not break at intersections (because divided highways are almost always limited access). A "limited access" highway is one that uses entrance and exit ramps in lieu of intersections. An "interstate" is a very specific type of high-quality limited access divided highway maintained by the federal government. A "turnpike" is a limited access divided highway that charges tolls; whereas, a "freeway" is a highway that does not charge tolls.
Roads can also be categorized by which level of government is responsible for maintaining them: US highways, as well as the aforementioned interstates, are maintained by the federal government; state highways are the responsibility of the state's department of transportation; county roads, township roads, and finally streets are each maintained by a progressively more local government agency, and finally we arrive at driveways, which are maintained by whoever is responsible for the specific facility (building or campus) to which the driveway belongs.
Western Ave is super long and has stuff all along it. Traveled the length from Evanston at the IHOP to the end which was a bit ambiguous once. Took hours.
A street has intersections. A highway just has off ramps.
A road is usually more rural. I live on a road..so named because it was named when this was farm country but now it is lined with houses.
Often times, like in NYC you'll see First street and First avenue. And they not parallel so you could be at the intersection of First and First.
Broadway, also designated as Route 9, goes from the southern tip of Manhattan to Montreal in Canada.
Originally a native Indian trail .
French fur trappers located in Montreal used the trail for trading beaver pelts captured by local Indian tribes. Early Dutch settlers named this trail Broadway about 1626.
I think road refers to countryside roads and streets are what you find in town. our longest continuous street in my area is seven miles, our longest road is 16 miles.
Streets are more urban, roads are more rural.
Remember. Many of the roads and infrastructure in the US was built at the time the automobile was invented. Especially out west. The majority of roads Europe have been around since Roman times.
Here is what the standard is suppose to be for road types, though many roads are not properly labeled or carry a label that applied when it was originally planned/built but no longer applies after future development, and different cities/municipalities may have different official standards for naming road types:
Road - Anything that connects two points (all of the following are types of road)
Way - A side street off a road.
Street - A public way with buildings on both sides.
Avenue - The same as a street but build perpendicular to them (if the street is north-south, the avenue should be east-west)
Boulevard - A wide street in a city with a median in the middle.
Lane - A narrow road.
Drive - A winding road that has its route shaped by natural features such as a lake or mountain.
Terrace - A road that runs along the top of a slope.
Place - A road with no throughway.
Court - A road with no throughway that ends in a loop or cul-de-sac.
Circle - A road with no throughway, containing a closed loop beginning and ending at intersections with the same street, or where the looped street closes onto itself.
Crescent - A winding, curved road that typically attaches to another road at each end
Plaza or Square - An open public space that's surrounded by businesses or streets.
in most cities, there are roads that should be boulevards that are called a different road type, usually because they weren't originally boulevards, many "Lanes" are expanded into a street/avenue/way later on but keep their "Lane" name, and some places, courts, & circles will have throughways added later.
He missed saying that addresses typically skip numbers between houses... one side of the street you'll have 2400, next door will be 2404, then 2408, 2412, the opposite side will be 2401, then 2405, 2409, 2413.
We also have small counties, so Kansas City, Missouri has 9 counties and Kansas City, Kansas has 5 counties, and street names typically change as you switch counties... example it may be Pecan St. in one county and as you enter another county the street name may change to Ragan Rd..
Another thing that he touched on, the downtown streets of a city are grid like, but residential areas tend to be more curvy and circles and culdesacs rather than straight grid like layout.
In the UK at least:
A "Street" usually has buildings on one or both sides
A "Lane" is usually narrow, and winding
A "Drive" is usually private, giving access to a small group of houses or structures
A "Mews" is a row of houses that have been converted from, or built to look like, stables.
An "Avenue" typically has trees at regular intervals along its sides
A "Way" is a small side street that turns off another street
A "Close" or "Place" is usually a street with a dead-end, or cul-de-sac
A "Court" is a residential street with a dead-end, like a "Close" or "Place", but usually ends in a circle or loop
An "Alley" is a small pathway between buildings, sometimes driveable, but usually not
A "Terrace" is a residential street that follows the top of a slope
And finally, a "Road", is a way that connects two points.
In other words, a "Road" is the general catch-all term for all of them. A Street is a _type_ of Road. A Lane is another _type_ of Road, and so on.
"What is the difference between a Street and a Road?" is like asking "What is the difference between an apple, and a fruit?".
I'm sure this is a repeat, but typically addresses are by block and not by miles from center. There's a center point, and 0-999 is from there to the end of the block (often 1st St/Ave) and so on. So, if you lived on Main St at the corner of 25th Ave, then your address would be close to 2500 Main St.
I live in South Florida and it's even a little more structured. Streets go East/West and Avenues go North/South and they are numbered going out from a central crosshairs. So, if you lived at 2300 NE 2nd Ave, Then you are in the NE corner of town, 2 blocks east of the central avenue and 23 blocks north of the central street, roughly on the corner of NE 2nd Ave and NE 23rd St.
Of course, no one needs to know how that works, but if you take the time to understand it, then it makes getting around a lot easier.
Street with the same name as continuous is the same street whether it has intersections or not. So if James Street goes from the North to the South of Chicago and it's still James street in the South of Chicago, it's one street.
In the US, there are general rules that most cities follow when naming trafficways.
Road: any route that connects two points, paved or unpaved. Way: a type of side street. Street: a paved road with buildings on both sides. Avenue: a street that crosses other streets at a ninety degree angle. Boulevard: a wide street with a center stripe or a median in the middle. Lane: a narrow road or street. Drive: a winding road that has its route shaped by natural features such as a lake or mountain. Terrace: a road that runs along the top of a slope. Place: a road with no throughway. Court: a road with no throughway that ends in a loop or cul-de-sac.
Those are rules of thumb; you'll always find exceptions.
Numbering: There are times when buildings will have single digit addresses, but it's normally on courts and places where the road is short. City blocks are numbered from central north-south and east-west streets, and begin at 100. In other words, we might have an east-west route called Main Street, crossed by a north-south one called Center Avenue. The blocks on either side of Center Avenue will be 100 East and 100 West, and the next two blocks will be 200 East and 200 West. They go up from there, so it's easy to see how it would get into the thousands -- in my example, the 1000 block of Main Street would just be ten blocks away from Center Avenue.
The numbering only extends to the city limits. If a particular street continues on into a bordering city, the numbers change to reflect how far away from their main streets you are as soon as you cross the border. In California's San Fernando Valley, there's a street called Glenoaks Boulevard that runs 22.4 miles. It passes through more than five cities, so the address number sequences change fairly frequently.
As with British numbering, addresses will be even numbers on the south and east sides of the street and odd numbers on the north and west sides.
Another thing to think about, is a lot of house numbers will also go by the miles from a center point of a city or major street. same as numbered freeway exits start at a state border. Im at exit 55, and its 55 miles to the boarder of california.
Millie seems to be confusing a block (as we would call it in America) and a street. 5th Ave in Manhattan is a street,. 5th Avenue between 57th and 56th streets is a block. I've never lived in or near a city with a zero point address numbering. Most places I have lived are either (like the UK) start at 1 and go up, or based on cross streets - if your home is between 92nd and 93rd St. your address begins with 92 (9201, 9202, etc..) Next block is 93XX homes, etc.
We also like to name streets after colleges. Some streets are themed. The development that I live in has college named streets.
On the names of streets thing in America the first street is also sometimes called broadway so that's why main and first aren't higher
I you think Streets are confusing, remember we drive on the Parkway and park on the Driveway. In Birmingham, Al the house number is based on the intersecting Avenue or Street. 1st Avenue starts at Division Street and runs to 90th Street. 9000, 9001, 9002 etc. First Avenue is based on 90th Street. 7800, 7801, 7802 etc. First Avenue would be based on 78th Street.
The city I grew up in, Main St. Changed into High St. at the town square with both being business and residential properties. I grew up on a corner lot. The front faced Fairlawn Ave. and our driveway was on oak St. Elm St. ran parallel to Oak St. There was also a Maple St. Years later I moved and that city had a few blocks named after Presidents. Some of my family lives in California and they have streets named after letters like "M St."
My house number is 11381... It's a 'county number', which was numbered based on location in the county, not the city. When the city I live in was incorporated in the 1970's, it kept the county numbering.
My closest numbered street is 4800 West, even though a mile to the east there are mountains. Again, the county addresses are centered somewhere south-southeast of my house...
Portland Oregon organizes streets going east to west, avenues north to south. Avenues tend to be numbered, but not always, and streets have names. You can tell how far a destination is from the North/South divider (Burnside) or the East/West divider (Interstate 5 or the Willamette River) because each intersection increases the building/house number by 100. Example: 724 is after the 7th street or avenue, 14235 is after the 142nd street/avenue intersection. Odds on one side, evens on the other. NW/SW/NE/SE/N/S divides the city into 6 sections. Lots of street names are Simpsons characters: (Reverend) Lovejoy, (Sideshow Bob) Pettygrove, (Mayor) Quimby, (Ned) Flanders, etc.
I live in South Florida, where the streets generally follow the grid pattern wherever possible (where not interrupted by a lake or river or canal or pond), and the house/building numbering system is tied to the street the building is on and where in the street numberingit falls. SOme streets are miles long. Whether or not they are physically interrupted by an obstacle, the numbering will still pick up where it continues, according to the nearest cross street. Take, for example, houses on a fictional 49th Avenue. The ones between 25 Street & 26th Street would have numbers in the 2500s, as they would be in the 2500 block (after 25th St. but before 26th St). The last two numbers change for the individual buildings, so in that block you might have 2510, 2520, 2530 and so forth on one side, and the opposite side might be 2505, 2515, 2525, 2535, etc. The ones on the next block (starting at cross street 26th St.) would be in the 2600 block, and so have numbers in the 2600s. Odd numbers are on one side of the road and even numbers on the opposite side. If you go much farther up the same road, 49th Avenue, to say 184th Street, all of the buildings starting at that cross street would be in the 18400 block. The next block, starting at the next cross street of 185th St., numbers will be in the 18500 block. The building number of my local grocery is 18409 because it is on the odd-numbered side of the street in a strip shopping center that begins at the corner of cross street 184th Avenue (and yes, here the numbering system does start at 1 (First Street) and go out in every direction by single number increments. By every direction I mean zero would be at First Street & First Avenue. Going north from there you would have 2nd St, 3rd St, and so on and the same going south, with Avenues as the cross streets. Going east and west the same numbering system but the road names will be Avenues with Streets as their cross streets. So you go out in each direction so the street numbering system ends up in quadrants NE, NW, SE & SW. You can conceivably have houses at 2601 NE 4th Street, another at 2601 SE 4th Street, another at 2601 NW 4th Street and a fourth at 2601 NE 4th Street. The same with Avenues. You can basically look at most addresses here and narrow down pretty well in your mind exactly where it is located without having to look at a map. The fly in the ointment is the City of Coral Gables, which named all of its streets Spanish names instead of numbering them. For those you'll need to consult a map. 😲
Where I’m from in Washington, the first part of your address is the cross street to the north. The second part is the house number. So if you’re address is 35620, 12th Avenue, it means you live in house number 20 on 12th avenue south of 356th street (or between 356th and 357th).
There are many buildings that are so large in New York City and other cities that they had their own zip code.
In Commiefornie, we have developments named after citrus trees, Movie stars movies. Like Audie Murphy's films. Destry, Audie Murphy Way. Soon we will name them after homeless camps!
In us their 10 blocks to the mile so if your address starts 26 then your 2.6 miles from center all other streets in that radius all start with 26 north south east or west so you can always gauge how far everything is from you
This video makes me realise that British people have a very different definition of “street”, lol.
Other tree named streets are Spruce, Walnut, and Chestnut
Almost everything in our small town is a street no matter what they run into or how the end. There are a couple of lanes, a road, an Avenue, and a Drive in our town. We have two highways intersecting in our town and we just added our 5th traffic light! Yeehaw!😂😂Most of our Roads are out of town.😊
Every city I have been driving thru has a front street.
The first time I came over to the UK, I spent over an hour trying to find the road signs (they're not stuck up on poles - lol!). I was also shocked at how many American fast food places were available.
Detroit is appropriately laid out like the spokes on a wheel !
Listening to them is like 'spot the braincell' 😂🤣😂
Hello y’all.
In Atlanta they’re all Peachtree St.