http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a990423.html
“The U.S. Postal Service, exhibiting rare common sense, has decided suffixes aren’t worth worrying about. It merely requests that street names be unique without regard to suffix, lest mail carriers be confused if the suffix is left off.”
Just letting people know, assuming anybody cares, that this is definitely NOT the case in Santa Cruz. My dad has a house on Western Ct., directly off from Western Drive.
That’s odd. I know that happens in Cambridge as well. I thought that was the rule, not the exception.
One presumes that the Postal Service adopted its concept after the names were created. Older streeets needing suffixes to differentiate would still abound.
Another common occurrence is to have “courts” off the main road with the same name, where the “court” is a cul-de-sac, and the numbering scheme simply continues from the main road around the cul-de-sac. In such a case, differentiating the “Ct.” from the “Dr.” or whatever wouldn’t be necessary.
Looking at the map of Santa Cruz, CA, it isn’t clear which may be the case, though since Western Dr. is on the West Side, and as I recall most of those homes are older, likely it is explanation one.
Perhaps some more info is needed before the Master can be nailed for incorrectnes… 
I wonder how much the municipalities take the USPS’s “requests” into account, even for new communities.
I don’t know if Canada Post has any preference, but here in Calgary, entire subdivisions are created with roads named the same or similarly. The new community I’ve moved into is called Royal Oak. It has streets named Royal Oak with any suffix you can think of and many you wouldn’t (e.g. Royal Oak Grove). In other sections it has Royal Birch Whatever, Royal Whatever and other Royal*.*.
While you immediately know what community an address is in, it can be aggravating when you actually try to navigate there, or even remember what suffix it has.
You see a lot of lost delivery trucks driving around with all the new people moving in. Especially since all the street signs aren’t up yet.
Chicago’s grid system has many of the east-west streets on the South Side numbered to indicate distance from the baseline street (Madison), but since there are two streets to a “city block” Street and Place are used to distinguish between them. This means you have (as you go south) 45th St, 45th Pl, 46th St, 46th Pl, and so on. I’ve never lived there myself, but I can imagine it could get pretty confusing.
Still, since Western Ct. comes directly off Western Dr., it’s pretty likely to have a different series of house numbers on it. So that helps the Post Office to get the mail delivered to the correct house.
That wouldn’t be true in Chicago, with the 45th Pl parallel to and a block away from 45th St.
But it would certainly be better for all if the street names were unique. I once spent quite a while driving around among Blueberry Drive, Blueberry Circle, Blueberry Knoll, etc. trying to find an address. And there wasn’t a damn blueberry bush for miles! Don’t these developers have any imagination at all?
Try to figure out the correct Peachtree in Atlanta. Just try.
I believe that it is indeed the case that today’s developers have to lay out unique names because of the USPS ruling. Municipalities would be aware of the requirement and ensure that streets conform.
Same problem in San Francisco- You have numbered Avenues, and numbered Streets. The two areas are complete opposites, both geographically and safety-wise. I don’t think the two sets ever come into contact with each other. Complicating the problem are the cross streets, which, for both sets, are alphabetical (Anza, Balboa, Cabrillo… vs. Arthur, Burke, Custer).
I suppose they wouldn’t be much of a problem if the Zip Code is included in the address, though. I don’t think we have any other repeated streets names. If we do, it’s few. And we don’t have any of that W. Grand vs E. Grand crap either.
neminem, welcome to the boards. Always nice to see more San Francisco / Santz Cruz Dopers.