Can someone please explain the difference if I live on a street a road or a drive. A 'Circle' I totally get. The rest baffles me.
[Edited 6/29/08 12:05pm]

Streets and Avenues are usually the same, but they go different directions. For example streets could go east-west and avenues are north-south. Roads are generally interchangeable in that as well.

Drive is often used for shorter stretches or streets that exist solely for access to properties.

Mars23 said:

Your smarts make me hot.

Even though he guessed none?

I don't know if they do this elsewhere, but in California traffic reports, they always talk about "surface streets." These are apparently anything that isn't a freeway, but I never understood why they call them surface streets. Aren't all the roads surface streets?

Streets can be divided into various types, each with their own general style of construction and purpose. However, the difference between streets, roads, avenues and the like is often blurred and is not a good indicator of the size, design or content of the area. For example, London's Abbey Road serves all the vital functions of a street, despite its name, and locals are more apt to refer to the "street" outside than the "road". A desolate road in rural Montana, on the other hand, may bear a sign proclaiming it "Davidson Street", but this does not make it a "street".

In the United Kingdom many towns will refer to their main thoroughfare as the High Street, and many of the ways leading off it will be named "Road" despite the urban setting. Thus the town's so-called "Roads" will actually be more streetlike than a road.

In some other English-speaking countries, such as New Zealand and Australia, cities are often divided by a main "Road", with "Streets" leading from this "Road", or are divided by thoroughfares known as "Streets" or "Roads" with no apparent differentiation between the two. In Auckland, for example, the main shopping precinct is around Queen Street and Karangahape Road, and the main urban thoroughfare connecting the south of the city to the city centre is Dominion Road.

In Manhattan and Seattle, east-west streets are "Streets" whereas North-South streets are "Avenues". Yet in St. Petersburg, Florida and Memphis, Tennessee, all of the east-west streets are "Avenues" and the North-South streets are "Streets" (Memphis has one exception--the historic Beale Street runs east-west).

In Ontario, numbered concession roads are east-west whereas "lines" are North-South routes.

In Montreal, "Avenue" (used for major streets in other cities) generally indicates a small, tree-lined, low-traffic residential street. Exceptions exist, such as Park Avenue and Pine Avenue. Both are major thoroughfares in the city. In older cities, names such as "Vale" which would normally be associated with smaller roads may become attached to major thoroughfares as roads are upgraded (e.g. Roehampton Vale).

Thanks Wikipedia!

RH: Does that make me hot?
JE: Nah, just tepid...

RenHoek said:

yes

and when is your birthday?

RenHoek said:

No, makes *me* hot. Your google skills just make me wanna...

jthad1129 said:

November '71

JustErin said:

GOD! I'm such a...

RenHoek said:

November '66

Forgot about 'Lane.' So now there is Street, Road, Drive and Lane. We have Oldtown Drive, Oldtown Road and Oldtown Lane. They ALL look the same to me. Its very confusing to the pizza delivery guy.

Do you also have 1/2 streets?


.
[Edited 6/29/08 16:47pm]

and what of boulevards?

We're in danger of forgetting pikes and parkways...

Did anyone mention "crescents" or "ways"?

a Boulevard has an easement or medium between the opposite lanes

JustErin said:

I love your crescent ways

do other countries have "courts"? the name we have for cul-de-sacs

ZombieKitten said:

We have both! In fact we seem to have everything here.

i think the rich sections of town have lanes, courts and ways. i live in the other demographic with roads, streets and drives

horatio said:

And here we call that a parkway. My grandmother always called the "boulevard" the bit of grass between the sidewalk and the street.

It is kind of exasperating.

ZombieKitten said:

we have those in america