Why do they change street names on different sides of a intersection?

Question

Why do they change street names on different sides of a intersection?

Answer 1

Most likely you are entering another county or city!

Answer 2

BOB,,changing names usually indicates a change from one county to another,,or village,,town,, or other legal boundary.

EXAMPLE: sign says  LEE-HENRY,,,,,,indicating that the sign is located in LEE county,,,on the other side of the intersection,,sign says HENRY-LEE,,,meaning that the sign is located in HENRY county,,,

Sometimes it would be confusing because you may never know what town you were in if "MAIN ST." never changed as it stayed the same going thru 5 adjacent towns..

Answer 3

Why not?  If the cross street is the dividing line between two jurisdictions, often the name of the street changes to reflect the wishes of the town or city it runs through.

Illinois, where I grew up, was famous for it.  Start in Westmont on your way to Naperville.  Turn left on 55th,  which becomes Maple Avenue when you get to Downers Grove.  That is, until you pass Naper Blvd, where it becomes East Chicago Avenue.  Keep going west, and eventually it turns into East New York Street.

About the same here in Oklahoma though, again based on who 'owns' the road.  It was all Blackland Farm Road until the state, and county got to trading roads off.  Now that same road is 70F until you get to the 32 crossing, where it now becomes Enos Road.

Answer 4

to confuse tourists

Answer 5

Many times it has to do with the City "grid lines". They divide the City up into sections and name streets well in advance of actually building them. I have seen streets that change names up to 5 times without ever leaving the City or County.

Answer 6

The previous answerers have obviously never visited Reno, Nevada.  Here it is a frequent occurrence, and highly frustrating, because the street names change with no apparent reason.  

Many times this happens in new housing developments, just because the developer wants to use different street names to go along with the 'theme' of the particular phase of the development, but the city is just as likely to change the name of a piece of a major thoroughfare just to make the owner of a casino or some other special interest group happy.  

It's really confusing if you're not familiar with the area you're driving in, and I can only imagine the trouble it causes for emergency responders (police, fire, ambulance, etc)