Street Names And Numbers

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30438, 12 May 1964, Page 16

Street Names And Numbers

The concern of the Urban Fire Authorities’ Association over the duplication of street names is well founded, and some action should be taken by the Government to remove this source of dangerous confusion where it still exists. Some years ago Christchurch local authorities co-operated with each other and the Post Office in renaming streets with the same or similar names. It is doubtful whether there is much reason to fear misunderstanding in Christchurch now. The trouble may be worse in other places, such as Auckland, where local government is chaotic.

The fire authorities that advocated numbering streets on the New York system, however, were asking for an impossibility. Citizens who prize the names of their streets for their associations, Historical and social, can rest easy in the knowledge that the topography of most New Zealand cities of any size makes the substitution of numbers for names impracticable. It is one thing to have numbered avenues running north and south and numbered streets running east and west on Manhattan Island: it would be a wildly different thing to try to impose a similar grid on the hills and gullies of Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin. In some American cities attempts to maintain numbering systems have led to extraordinary complications, including several distinct zones, all starting at First street. The trouble that this can cause at the junction zones can be imagined. In other cases two halves of a street may be separated by miles of water. Anything that can reasonably be done to help firemen in their work should be done; but it would be unreasonable to try to force New Zealand street systems into an unfamiliar pattern that does not in fact exist. That would only make confusion worse confounded.