Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Confusing road names in Singapore

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Confusing road names in Singapore

An American, who now lives in Singapore, found the road names to be confusing. Read her views here.

3 comments:

Wealth Journey said...: Anyone care to comment on how they felt navigating the routes of USA?

I've never been to USA but during my stay in Queensland, Australia, I had to rely on the MAP (GPS was not prevalent then) to navigate unfamiliar routes. If someone were to ask me to fetch him/her to Miskin St, I would have absolutely no idea where it is unless he tells me it is in Toowong(the town). When you get to Toowong, you would absolutely have no idea that miskin St. is between Dean St and Sherwood St unless you have been travelling that area for a while. There is no linkage to the names at all. So in the end, you rely on the map for direction. The main point is, when navigating unfamiliar terrorities, we usually get to the major landmark (ie, the town or other prominent landmark) and then find our way around.

I guess it might come naturally for a person staying there for years on end to know but for someone new to the place and unfamiliar, there will always be fustration. Is it the system being unintuitive or is it just the lack of familiarity with the system?; October 18, 2009 12:55 PM
Vincent Sear said...: Many US cities are build on grid planning, i.e. on a north-south east-west grid of roads when building the roads. This was possible because they took over the city, then planned the settlement and traffic network. Very neat and easy, e.g. if you're on an "avenue" it means that you're on a north-south orientation and if you're on a "street" it means that you're on an east-west orientation. If you're on an intersection of an "avenue" and a "street" you know your exact location like a navigator know the longitude and latitude where the ship is.

However, the roads and streets of Singapore were developed randomly since the days of Raffles without a standard grid plan but with random bends and curves according to the pathways flattened by pedestrians and horse carts, then later convenient built into roads.

However, the original "downtown" Singapore did (and still do) have some grid planning. For the "bigtown" South Bridge is 1st Street and Hill is 2nd Street. For the "smalltown" North Bridge is 1st Street, Victoria is 2nd Street, Queen is 3rd Street, Waterloo is 4th Street, Bencoolen is 5th Street, Prinsep Street is 6th Street and Selegie is 7th Street.

Some may wonder why one long but contiguous stretch of road like Hill-Victoria-Kallang are named as 3 separate roads. It's to mark the demarcation lines between "bigtown", "smalltown" and "out-of-town". On Hill Street, you in "big town". On Victoria Street, you're in "smalltown". On Kallang Road, you're "out-of-town".; October 18, 2009 8:45 PM
Vincent Sear said...: Due to decades of redevelopment under different developers with different ideas under different circumstances, Singapore do have a road-naming system (or rather lack of system) that can baffling to visitors. The top one example must be Orchard Road. It's traffic runs one-way from Tanglin Road (at Scotts Road junction) until it enters Selegie road. But here, on the opposite with traffic running the other way, is also part of Orchard Road, the stretch where YMCA is, between Stamford Road and Penang Road. After the completion of SMU, the whole maze becomes even more mindboggling.; October 19, 2009 3:48 PM