At least one resident of Orchard Ave 02461 is unhappy about a proposal to force their street to come up with a new street name.
Orchard is one of 44 roads that are impacted by the duplication. The duplication plan would rename the smaller of the duplicate streets, resulting in changes for 200 residences.
I’ve been a bit mystified about this issue. I would have thought that the residents of the duplicate streets would be leading the charge on unique’ifying (TM) the street names, since they are the ones who are at risk from 911 confusion.
Since it does seem that lots of people care deeply about keeping their current street name, I do think that number of households should drive the decision of which street gets its names changed, rather than which street is older.
Anyone got the list of 60 suggested names? Setti Lane has a nice ring
The residents with land lines are already protected, @Jerry, since the City’s computers know where they are. The issue is cell phones–so a person hit near a street would call it in, but the City computers wouldn’t necessarily know where they are–Orchard or Orchard? Beach or Beech? And there are also streets vs. lanes vs. roads!
Who gets to decide on the new street name? Will it be assigned or could the residents vote on it? Maybe this is a chance for the residents of Waban to go ahead and finally have a legitimate Varitek Rd. without having to resort to letters taped on the Varik Rd sign.
On topic, the duplicate streets are a public safety nuisance. And we’re not even talking about streets with the same name, but different suffixes. There is a Parker Rd., a Parker St., a Parker Terr. and a Parker Ave., and they’re all within 1/4 mile of each other!
@Andreae – agreed. ??? Yes, that’s why I think its definitely something that should be sorted out, particularly since many other towns resolved similar issues years ago.
@Andreae,
I attended the presentation on this issue and your information is not quite correct. The problem is NOT just with cell phones but with landlines as well. From the presentation, it showed that a person calling from “North St” was not distinguishable by village. The computer screen the dispatcher see’s simply says “North St” with no other way of identifying which of the two North Streets the caller was on. It would be fine if the caller was able to say it was the one in Newton Center or the one in Newtonville but what happens when the caller is not the resident and does not know?
And it was also clear that the problem was not just with the dispatcher but also with the various responders (Police, Fire, EMS) going to the wrong location. Although there is some pain for the people who are affected by this change, it seems a small price to pay in the event of an emergency.
And I imagine there’s room for human error, even when the data is driven by computer, even with a different suffix. It certainly happens with DPW, hopefully less so with emergency response.
Orchard Ave? Isn’t that in Newton Highlands?
For twenty years I lived on one of these duplicate streets. (West Newton and Newton Centre). Around 1994 this issue came up and my fellow neighbors lead the charge AGAINST changing it from STREET to AVENUE. I was in minority so I slunk away.
I would have GLADLY spent the short time and money changing all my stationary and informing my friends. It would have taken me ONE day! Instead, my counterpart neighbor and I (A very nice fellow I might add) spent the next twenty YEARS swapping misdirected mail (driving the 3 miles to do it once every two weeks), packages, the occasional important check and constantly (at least once a week) answering the door explaining to a poor delivery guy, it was my counterpart who ordered the new washer and dryer, not me and oh, sorry but you’ve got another half-hour drive to the other part of town.
And don’t get me started on when GPS came about and the only location initially entered into the system was NOT mine. Out-of-town friends would call me on their cell phone angry that they were pounding on the door and I wouldn’t answer, why did I invite them if I was going to be rude to them. I would say, “I’m looking out my window and there’s NO ONE at my door! PLEASE believe me! You’re at the wrong house!”
Twenty years of unnecessary confusion. Sometimes I think I downsized just to escape the insanity. I truly don’t understand the opposition to this.
@Adam. When I was a kid, Orchard Avenue was indeed part of the Highlands. The entering Waban sign had an old silver background with black lettering and was plunked on Woodward Street, right between Beethoven and Allen Avenue. One day we woke to find that this old sign was gone and a new entering Waban sign with a green background and sketch of an American Indian was replacing it between Hinckley and Carver Road. I was told that residents of several streets including Orchard Avenue had petitioned the City to have that area transferred to Waban. The Highlands was Waban’s poor relation in those days while Waban was flying high.
That must have been before we got O’Hara’s!
Maybe that’s how the city can get them to relax a bit about the name change. “Settle down or we’ll move you back to the Highlands”
@Jerry. They should be so lucky.
@Greg. Do you remember Art Carroll’s? That was the dive that O’Hara’s thankfully replaced many years back. I don’t mean to be crude, but it had a men’s room where one patron would be using the toilet and another the sink. Those were the good old days in Newton Highlands.
Art Carroll’s had a good softball team that liked to celebrate their victories.
I’ve got some self interest here, but really, the city and its committee should decide. I’d also state that special consideration should be given to folks that have home businesses.
So first I’d consider length of street and number of homes (to minimize inconvenience)
Second I’d consider home businesses (to minimize cost and inconvenience)
Third I’d consider other factors such as age of street, historic nature of street, etc.
For those doubting the home business aspects, lots of consultants, lawyers, and accountants work from home. With today’s computers you really don’t need an office… But it is very expensive to change stationary, corporate reports, websites, etc.
As for Orchard, I really do sympathize, and I’m personally effected. But once you take away the first consideration being size, it opens it up to all sorts of emotional arguments.
There are some streets right next to others so the entire neighborhood is changing names. Now THOSE folks I feel bad for.
How many duplicate streets actually share a zip code? For exact matches (same suffix), I can only think of one. There are two Fuller Streets in West Newton/02465. One is by Brae Burn and the other near Franklin Elementary. (They extend into 02468/Waban and 02453/South Waltham repsectively) I think even if we can’t get the other residents of the full duplicates to agree, we should at least fix this one, since even specifying village can’t ease confusion.
How about we find out which is the older street and call it Give it the Prefix Old. Or find the more recent street and add the prefix New.
What an elegant solution, Marie. The Village 14 blog needs a “like” button.
It is an excellent idea!
In fact, perhaps we should extend it to other things in the city that have duplicate titles. Such as: Ye Ole Ward Three Alderman-At-Large Ted Hess-Mahan.
Marie – that’s a seriously good idea. Put the prefix on the smaller street. Or if there are two on different cardinal points of the city, one could be (for example) West Fuller Street.
Now that Marie has elegantly solved this problem of two streets with the same name, can we apply her solution to those streets that are split into disconnected sections? Upland Ave, Brierfield Rd, Winslow Rd., and Woodcliff Rd come to mind. Although each is one street with one name, their disconnected sections present similar opportunities for confusion.
Won’t property deeds need correction ?
@Bill: From the the information posted by the city (linked above)…
And my personal deed to my house, now in the safety deposit box at the bank ?
No change necessary ?
@blueprintbill, deeds will not need to be corrected.
All deeds recorded with the Registry of Deeds must include the grantee’s name and address, as well as the purchase price. The legal description of the property (reference to the book and page number of a prior recorded deed or other document, metes and bounds, reference to a plot plan, etc.) is all that is legally required to identify the property itself, since street addresses do sometimes change over time.
That is not to say that the street name changes will not cause confusion, annoyance and inconvenience for buyers and sellers, particularly borrowers. Lenders may require a certified document from the City attesting to the change in street name before approving a mortgage, or some other proof of change in the street address.
And it will probably screw up the records indexing at the Registry of Deeds, at least for a time. All documents recorded at the Registry of Deeds are required to have the street address in the margin for indexing purposes, although leaving it off will not affect the validity of the document. But the other information, .e.g, grantor/grantee name, legal description of the property, references to other prior deeds or other documents, etc., are sufficient for a title search.
I think adding “Old” or “New” or West/East/North/South to the street names is an excellent idea. Another one might be to only change the numerical part of the address, adding a digit to the beginning of one street’s addresses so that one street has 2-digit addresses and the other has 3-digit.
Being on a street that has a “Road vs Street” duplication, I can tell you that Rd vs St vs Ave is not enough to prevent confusion. We get restaurant deliveries for our duplicate address, and we get mail for the other address if the sender gets the Rd. vs St. wrong even if they get the zip code right (it was very surprising to me that the PO ignores the zip in making this decision). A difference in the numerical part of the address would help solve this problem, and “Old” or “West” would probably work better too.
Property on deeds is usually defined by lot numbers within a subdivision or by defining corners of the lot being a certain number of feet from an intersection. The street address, if given as part of the description of the property, would be understood to be the address at the time of the deed. It sounds like the city will file a document defining the old and new addresses. So there is no need to change your deed.
People move all the time – I’ve had about 7 different addresses as an adult; it just isn’t that big of a deal. Bigger deal for businesses, but businesses move too. The city should offer greater compensation to businesses. The thread on this topic over at the TAB blog was full of poorly informed lamentations on address changes (one writer complained about changing their passport, apparently not realizing that passports do not have your address in them permanently – you are supposed to write it in the passport in pencil).
I love Marie’s solution – simple and elegant.
If I may add to Bruce’s thoughts about Rd./St./Ave., my story is a great illustration of the confusion these closely named addresses can cause. No need to go into how we got into this fix, but years ago I found myself in the early stages of labor in a hospital and unable to get in touch with my husband by phone. I called the Newton police at midnight to ask them to go to the house to tell him to come to the hospital, and they said they’d be happy to and would be right on it. When he hadn’t arrived 3 hours later, I called the police again and they assured me that yes, they’d gone to the house, but no one was home at T____ St. At this point in time, I was in the late stages of labor as I let the dispatcher know my present condition, told her we lived on T____ Ave., and to please HURRY! Of course, the dispatcher was most apologetic (horrified may be the better descriptor!), and the police arrived at the correct address with blue lights swirling at 3:30 AM. The new Dad arrived an hour before delivery and all ended well, but since that night I’ve always said I’d gladly give up the name of my street to avoid a similar situation for other people who may be in situations that are more serious.
Ours became a funny family story, but it alerted me to the fact that for others the duplicate street names may be a serious safety concern.
Maria’s solution is great. What’s sad is that this is an issue. Just change the names and don’t ask questions. People who want to fight it are just fighting for the fight. Ridiculous, non important stuff.
Kim – maybe you and I aren’t too attached to the names of our streets, but many other people are for possibly any number of reasons. They could have lived at that address for decades (one becomes attached to ones’ address in particular when older); the street might have a historic reference (e.g. Orchard St); etc. You need to be sensitive to that before just saying rename them and move on. In this technology day and age you would think there would be some mechanism in place so that duplicate street names in our villages would not be an issue.
@Marie, it is exactly what they did in my home town in Indiana. There were two of a number of streets and unfortunately someone died when the ambulance went to the wrong Jackson St. So now there is East Jackson and West Jackson.
@Bruce, at the same time the town decided to renumber all addresses so that they were consistent. My parents home went from 24 to 2400. The two and three digit addresses were assigned to the east side of town and the four digit addresses to the west side of town.