Saturday, July 05, 2008

What a brilliant idea!

Having just spent ages on the phone trying to give directions to someone trying to deliver something to me, for about the millionth time, I had a eureka moment.

A flash of genius.

A brilliant idea.

You'll be impressed with this.

How about giving the streets names and the buildings sequential numbers!

Then I could tell people, for example, that I'm at number ten Acacia Avenue, Dubai Marina. And visitors would be able to find me.

I must pass this innovative idea to the Municipality, or Emaar, or the RTA or Emirates Post or whichever is the responsible authority.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brillant indeed but I wouldn't pass it over (to these Authorities...)

Why not? They will turn it around and sell the street names to brands - if it works for the metro stations... - and you will and up living at Mountain Dew Fresh Lemon street which is much more humiliant!

Seabee said...

anon, you're a genius! Think of the millions they'd generate from the thousands of streets they could sell naming rights to. Wow!

Anonymous said...

Here in good old KSA we have street names and numbers. Of course, no one knows what street they live on, and the taxi drivers don't know any of them either. In fact, to get a taxi back to my compound, I often have to call it by its old name, which it hasn't had for 6 years! Anyway, why would you want to initiate such an outdated system. About 2 1/1 years ago, the KSA powers-that-be decided that home mail delivery was what was needed (imagine that, how convenient!). But instead of going with the centuries old, tried and true, mailbox in door or at street, they thought they could do better. They went about installing internet connected, GPS signal sending, state of the art electronic mailboxes in Jeddah and Riyadh and I think Mecca. The mailman would be able to find your mailbox using his trusty GPS in his van, rather than that old fashioned, silly address thingy, and your mailbox would e-mail you when the mail was in! Can you imagine such a paradise? Anyway, you can imagine how this all ended. Check here http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2008070410930 for yesterday's newspaper article on the 'success' of the venture. Maybe you guys in Dubai would just be better off with street names!

Seabee said...

Kathryn thank you for that classic mailbox info. I love it - talk about re-inventing the wheel!

Susan said...

I used to tell taxi drivers and delivery men, "grey building, Barsha," and they would know it instantly. Add names and numbers and I fear mass confusion...

moryarti said...

well, you kindda said it there.. until they find a way to make money out of it, they are gonna leave it as is :)

Anonymous said...

wow, I like American organization. It'd be so weird to have to go just by landmarks, in the long run wouldn't it save money/time/etc to just make an address system?

Em said...

i believed they tried numbering roads unsuccessfully.

Seabee said...

Mars, yes, but they were told before they started numbering roads that it wouldn't work here. Each area has a number and each road within it has a number - but the numbers are the same in each area (there are hundreds of Street 1a for example) and there's no logic to it because the roads are not built as a grid.No-one bothers to use them because they're too confusing.

samuraisam said...

seabee: I have a community/street/house number and in conjunction with a GPS it works well. Of course the problem is when you ask someone for their street address, logically no one knows it.

A good place to access the street numbers etc is google earth or wikimapia.org

Delivery services have started using the numbers aswell as dubai transport; of course when I ordered a taxi the other day it didn't show up and the driver called me to tell me he couldn't find my house (because somehow through the whole computerized system he had been given the same house/street number but a different community number); in the end I got shafted and he asked me to call for another taxi. Thanks RTA.

rosh said...

Seabee - similar to Sam's, my folks home (in SHJ) has a community/street/house number. The problem - to this day, people keep referring it to some nearby landmark and give directions from there on. Kinda hilarious.

Anonymous said...

Hello everyone,
An initiative has already been launched to address this annoying issues by RTA, Dubai Municipality, and others entities. More info here

http://weknowdubai.com/latest/dubai-address-system-revamp-will-help-public-locate-places-easily-3.html