I think the street names on Bellevue/Kirkland/Redmond are very convenient actually. After recently moving from a city that had “normal” street names,  I have found it much easier to get around here. The beauty of our road naming system is its pattern. Cities with “normal” street names do not have an easy pattern, and require you to memorize where streets are located and in what order they lay. Cities have a lot of streets; I am happy I do not have to memorize all of them around here.

Here are some general tips to make navigating the Eastside roads a simple task:

Roads named like Northeast ## Street are east/west roads. The higher the number, the further north they are from Main Street.

Roads named like ## Avenue Northeast are north/south roads. The higher the number, the further east they are Seattle.Notice avenues always go perpendicular to streets.

Even the street address of a building follow the pattern. If an address is 450 110th Ave NE, then it is on 110th Avenue Northeast (a north/south road) just north of Northeast 4th Street (450 is greater then 400, which corresponds to Northeast 4th Street).

Karl Jansen, Kirkland