Sometimes the simplest questions have even simpler answers. Reader Sidney Joseph writes: "In Toronto, what is the difference between a street, avenue, road and boulevard?"
To which Dr. Gridlock would add: What's the difference between a court and a place? Why do we drive on something called a parkway? And where does Avenue Road -- perhaps Toronto's weirdest street name -- fit into all of this?
First, the quick answer to Mr. Joseph's question, which is that there is no real difference, strictly speaking, between streets, avenues, roads and boulevards, although boulevards are generally the bigger of the group, as in Lake Shore Boulevard.
The city's guidelines for street suffixes say that any of the above endings are appropriate "for major thoroughfares or streets of several blocks in length."
Toronto maintains no other functional distinction for these four street suffixes, as there is in New York, where avenues run north-south and streets run east-west. (And of course the Big Apple has numbered streets, a sort of low-tech global positioning system.)
But there are loose definitions for other street suffixes spelled out in Toronto's guidelines.
Drive, trail and way are reserved for streets that are "winding or curved." Terraces, gardens, groves, pathways and heights are "minor or short streets."
Lanes, mews or closes are "narrow streets generally used for service." Crescents and circles are self-explanatory. Gates are streets that form an entrance to a subdivision.
Courts and places are usually cul-de-sacs -- cul-de-sac being French for "bottom of the bag" and defined in my dictionary as a "blind alley" or "trap." Something to remember when you are thinking about moving to the suburbs.
And squares, explains Desmond Christopher, the city's supervisor of street and parcel mapping, are usually squares. But not always. "It doesn't have to be a square to be a square."
Clearly, street naming is an art, not a science. Mr. Christopher says it is a balancing act between developers, politicians and city staff.
The issue of street names has come up lately as the city courts controversy with plans to rename some 204 Toronto streets that are now duplicates or triplicates because of amalgamation, a process Mr. Christopher admits is a headache.
It is necessary, though, to make sure ambulances aren't sent to North York when they are needed in Etobicoke, he adds.
While there are plans to honour prominent Torontonians with streets named after them, in some cases, confusion could be avoided, and quite painlessly, by merely changing a street's suffix, and not the actual street name, Mr. Christopher suggests.
Separate from the issue of a street's name is its actual classification, which may have been the issue that Mr. Joseph was trying to get at with his question.
And Toronto certainly does classify streets according to prominence and size, prioritizing things such as maintenance and snow clearance. There are five categories, from biggest to smallest: expressway, major arterial road (at least four lanes), minor arterial road (at least two lanes), collector road and local road.
Mr. Christopher is no help on how the curiously named Avenue Road came to be, but he speculates that it may have something to do with it being the northern arm of University Avenue. Perhaps one of Dr. Gridlock's readers knows the answer.
Dr. Gridlock appears every Monday. Send your traffic or transit questions, tips and rants to jgray@globeandmail.ca.
Jeff Gray