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Comment by kin | Hacker News Reader

Oh my god I went into the comments section to post exactly this! It makes me curious how they determine when to show a street name. Honestly, all I want is at all times the center of my screen should show its street name. That's it. Sometimes I find myself zooming in and out of the very center of my screen and it refuses to show the street. Instead it shows the names of nearby streets I don't care about. Sometimes I'm on the damn street and I just want to know what street I'm currently on. It really does feel arbitrary.

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This happens in the real world frustratingly often too. Many cities will have huge streets that intersect each other, and at that intersection, there will be no signs. No street signs at all to tell you what intersection you're at, despite being at perhaps the largest and most used intersection in the city. It's infuriating.

It's especially awful when people try to give directions based on crossroads and stuff. "Drive on Main until you get to water street then turn." then water street isn't marked. or "It's at the crossroads of 46th and main" then 46th isn't marked so you have to find 43rd and count three streets forward. You'd think that would be one of their base duties.

Hudson county, NJ takes that a step further (especially in the West New York/Guttenberg area): E/W streets are numbered, crossed by a dozen or so named N/S Avenues/Boulevards. OK so far. But in some areas there aren't any street signs for those names, just "local" street names (which, by the way, usually aren't visible on maps) in both directions.

Or if they do have signs, they are positioned up high, easy to see from a car but very hard to see as a pedestrian.

This is my bane. Or they only have them facing the directions cars come from so that there's a 50% chance you can see one as a pedestrian without going well out of your way.

I think Los Angeles is the only city I've seen that actually manages this pretty well. Major streets have signs hanging in the middle of the street, large signs and reliably placed. https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Burton+Way+%26+S+Doheny...

Smaller streets have smaller signs, but also fairly reliably placed https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Burton+Way+%26+S+Doheny...

King County in Washington State is pretty good about having street signs on corners. I'd say 95% of the time they are findable, the size is a bit small, but overall they are quite usable and the names are printed on both parts of the sign and, baring trees, visible from all four corners, finding the cross street if you are a pedestrian walking down on the same side of the sidewalk as the sign is the worst case.

I've seen the signage fall apart at the more complicated intersections though. But then again, labeling 3 left turns probably isn't an easy task to be charged with, as a driver I am not always sure what sort of signage I'd want in those situations. (I swear I've seen some intersections where they just gave up though)

It doesn't even seem to prefer labeling streets that are on a route given to you when searching directions. This also baffles me, they seem to prefer visual balance and aesthetics over usability.

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