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Comment by pragone | Hacker News Reader

Where is this for? I can't think of anywhere I've lived in the northeast (NJ, NY, PA) where this strongly applies.

Here's one: I live on a "Drive". It's road built through townhouse complex. Pretty much the exact opposite of what I'd call "long, winding road shaped by natural environments". It connects to a "court", which is another road through the complex that most certainly does not "[end] in a circle or loop – like a plaza or square".

Edit: "Road" isn't even on this list!

2nd Edit: I've consulted some traffic engineers. I'm genuinely curious to see what they say.

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I live in a Pacific Northwest suburb and they pretty much follow this convention to the letter. Probably has something to do with how recently everything here was built.

Doesn't really work around here, either (Nashville, TN area)-- the only reasonably consistent rules here are that numbered streets on one side of the river are "Avenues", numbered streets on the other side are "Streets", and most of the Civil War-era turnpikes have retained their names (mostly named after where they go) and are called "Pikes".

Otherwise, we've got "Avenues" and "Streets" all mixed around (running both parallel and perpendicular to each other. "Drives" which are straight, shortest paths between two points without any regard to the natural geography. "Boulevards" that are little undivided two-lane neighborhood streets, and "Lanes" that are heavily-trafficked four-lane roads with medians.

Maybe road naming is more consistent in newer, more highly planned cities?

I think a more likely rule is that the longer roads in a development are often named "Drive" and they are more likely to connect to the rest of the street network.

As per the end of an article - these are not actually codified anywhere, they just happen to be true more often than not.

More of an unofficial naming code than a hard-and-fast rule.

Really? I'm from NYC and FDR Drive is absolutely shaped by the East River, and most the other stuff in the video checks out there too..

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