Seriously, what’s going on with street names?

I live near NW Amberwood Drive and 206 Avenue; at least, I did. According to the signs on these streets I now live on Walker Road and John Olsen Avenue.

There are a lot of road name changes happening in Hillsboro right now, which is confusing. Even worse: different apps are figuring this all out at different paces. Near my place Google Maps knows about John Olsen Avenue, but Apple Maps still calls it 206. Neither knows about Walker Road.

You could spend a lifetime discussing whether the various changes make sense—my wife and I have already put hours into this. Why is Amberwood, which doesn’t connect to the existing Walker Road, being called Walker? And why does the change stop at Corneilius Pass, after which it becomes Butler and later Airport and someone please stop me…

Ahem. Sorry about that. According to the city’s website explaining the changes, Hillsboro currently has two “grids,” which is city planner speak for the numbering and naming system for roads. Roads in Hillsboro are confusing because two grids collide within city limits.

There’s the “City” grid, which is used in most of Hillsboro and the “County” grid, which extends from Portland through Beaverton into more recently annexed portions of Hillsboro. If you’ve ever driven from downtown Hillsboro toward Beaverton, and wondered how you got from 25th Avenue to 206th so quickly, this is why: you’ve left the city grid for the county one.

The idea with renaming streets is extend the City grid to the entire city, which means any roads named using the County scheme needed to change. Most of the prominent north-south streets are getting non-numbered names, which avoids the issue entirely. This is why 206 Avenue is now John Olsen avenue (until you get to the city limits at which point you re-enter the country grid and you’re back on 206 and gah why can’t this be simpler…)

To quote the city’s FAQ page:

In the 1980s, City leaders determined Hillsboro’s distance from Portland made it logical to continue implementing the City of Hillsboro grid. Today, City policy recognizes that the continued implementation of the City grid would be less impactful on current and future residents. Currently, approximately 44,000 homes and businesses have addresses based on the City of Hillsboro grid, and 11,000 homes and businesses have addresses based on the County grid.

The numbers streets is just one kind of change that’s happening. Many streets with NW after their name will soon have NE instead, because while they were in the NW corner of the County grid they’re in the NE corner of Hillsboro.

If you’re really curious check out this schedule of all current and upcoming name changes, if for no other reason to see if anything near you is changing. It’s confusing right now, but I think it’ll end up being easier in the long term.