[stephengillie]

Tacoma has a bizarre direction pattern for its streets. Every location east of A Street is "East", and west of Division is "West". Between these 2 (and including A and Division streets), everything north of 6th Ave is "North" and south of 6th Ave is "South".

6th Ave itself has no direction name, and oddly, streets increment in both directions. North of 6th Ave is 7th Ave North, while south of 6th Ave is 7th Ave South. There is no 1st Ave through 5th Ave.

These directional names persist through Pierce County, so the vast majority of roads in the county have "East" appended to them, all the way out to Mt. Rainier (which is also in Pierce County). North of Tacoma's Narrows Bridge lay Gig Harbor and the Key Peninsula, where streets prepend the direction name with "KP" - i.e. "KPN" for North - to be more clear that they're across Puget Sound from the rest of Pierce County.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma,_Washington#Transportat...

[_cerv]

This has to be something that is somewhat unique to the Pacific Northwest lowlands, where you have very large counties that are densely populated in spots. I lived near 127th St, which had 127th St Ct, 127th St E, 127th St Ct E, and then a few miles away you had 127th St S, etc.

God forbid someone give these streets creative names.

[mjevans]

I'd rather have shockingly un-creative names.

Given most of these cities run streets north or south I'd love the streets to have Lat (N-S) or Long (E-W) followed by the subset of GPS co-ordinates that are unique within the location.

This looks like a good standard to start from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Grid_Reference_System

For pure estimates 8 digits (within their grid) give 10 meter accuracy which should be enough, so choosing the full "min+second" (truncated, no sub-seconds) listing or the first 4 digits (truncate off 10 thousandths) from the lat or long should suffice.

This would also have a bonus of making anyplace addressable (in a postal sense) by it's GPS co-ordinates.

[com2kid]

> Tacoma has a bizarre direction pattern for its streets. Every location east of A Street is "East", and west of Division is "West". Between these 2 (and including A and Division streets), everything north of 6th Ave is "North" and south of 6th Ave is "South".

Same way King County is laid out. Makes navigation quite easy IMHO.

Of course Seattle goes down to 1st before things become "South", the lack of a 1st through 5th is a bit off, but otherwise everything seems consistent. Seattle having named streets is a bit annoying, throughout most of the rest of King County it is possible from anywhere to anywhere else just by being given an intersection. Most of (all of?) Seattle's named streets actually do have the street number on top of them, in rather small print.

[User23]

That's what the Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest mnemonic is for. Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike, Pine