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Learn how to use a map? Sunpup, I know how to use a map. When I have an address location, how am I supposed to know where the location is on the map? If I already knew where the place was, I wouldn't need the map or GPS to find it. Even when I try to put many different addresses into MapQuest or Google Maps, it gives no result, because the address is not standardized and often doesn't even have a number. I've lived in about 50 different cities and used many maps. I am well traveled. There is no good reason for Puerto Rico to insist on being so backwards. I know you are a defender and apologist for Puerto Rico. However, using intelligent normalized street addresses would benefit almost everyone except for gas companies, car dealers, and car manufacturers who benefit by needless extra miles on cars clogging roads from people being lost. You want to help Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans? Work to make life easier for newcomers who have moved here as well as visitors. I don't agree with some who have an attitude of complacency. A key reason why I've been successful in life is from making improvements in my life and my surroundings. Things like inchoate normalized street addresses are holding back Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans. "Puerto Rico does it better?" How is confusing people, wasting time, wasting gas better, clogging roads with lost people better? Sunpup, don't get me wrong. I'm not an "all things PR are bad." I'm more a "let's make the world a better place for everyone." If I see something wrong, I work to try to fix it.
STT Resident, I've tried the getting out of the car and asking 2 people for directions, to a well known shopping center. Both gave me bad and incorrect directions. Even if they had given me correct directions, its still a needless waste of time and gas to drive around to find someone who speaks English relative to if the GPS would work as it should, if people decide to truly see to it that Puerto Rico does it better.
If people and businesses used their numerical addresses, and posted them on their buildings, this could make a big difference. In the states, while not every building has a street number visible from the road, many do. That way a person knows if they are going in the right direction or not, and how close they are, such as if they are in the 7000 block and their destination is 8205. It also tells you which side of the street to be looking, when all the even numbers are on one side, and odd numbers on the other. In a time when free GPS exists, other than the cost of buying your GPS device, it's foolish that Puerto Rico doesn't take advantage of it. When people are more efficient and effective, they are more valuable. If they are more valuable, they are worth more, and thus can be paid more. Eliminating barriers and hardships is generally a good idea.
Yet countries like Japan, which has nothing even close to resembling the street addresses used in the US, grew to be a more technologically advanced country than the US and was the 2nd largest economy in the world for many years.
Yet, when I send mail to my relatives in PR, somehow it always makes it to their mailboxes on time The problem is your GPS software, not PR's address system
both are. once you get out those areas you get into the 'i live on kilometer 1.7 on carretera so and so' aka 'the second house after the mango tree at the curve by the colmado'
how do postmen or delivery drivers find the right houses/buildings?
I am still correct in that the addressing system is a mess and leaves much to be desired. I'm not saying all the addresses are faulty, only that too many of them are incomplete and faulty. I'm not alone in thinking this way.
What is better, more efficient, more reliable? Is punching in "55 Condado Ave" in less than 30 seconds better? Is it safer/better being able to HEAR the directions, and safer/better to re-route you if you miss a turn or deviate from the route?
Or is it better, more efficient, more reliable having to find someone who speaks English, knows the place you seek, is willing to take time to explain to you how to get there, finding pen and paper, hope you hear them correctly with a possible accent and spell the street names correctly, writing down a number of steps, getting back in your car, having to drive while reading the notes? If you miss a turn, or the person who gave you the directions forgot a key step, you don't have GPS to automatically put you back on track. That's happened to me many times here when the addresses wouldn't go into GPS. No reasonable person can honestly say that is a better, more efficient way to find a destination compared to when the address works in GPS.
Hotels and rental car companies get more newcomers and visitors than most businesses, and thus are much more professional about using normalized street addresses. It's in their interest to make it easy as possible for their customers to find them. Each hotel and rental car company doesn't want hundreds of lost guests wasting time, calling them on how to get to their location. Professional standardization greatly helps to reduce that.
In contrast, as an example, grocery stores and the Salvation Army are not as professional about their addresses. They aren't as dependent on newcomers having to find them.
The postmen are not newcomers or visitors. They know the ins and outs after running the same route for months or years.
Here's one place I had to go, and got lost finding. This was the faulty and incomplete address the business had listed as their address. There was no numerical address of WHERE on Ave 65 Infanteria this was located. I stopped to ask 2 people and they both pointed me in the wrong direction. I wasted over 30 minutes and still didn't find it until it was too late that day. What should have taken 15 minutes to get there took over 45 minutes over 2 days, not to mention the wasted gas, frustration. If you've already been there, you know where it is.
Ave 65 Infanteria
Carolina PR 00978
For those that scolded me telling me to learn how to use a map, how am I to know WHERE on the map that is located? Ave 65 Infanteria is a very long road.
I am still correct in that the addressing system is a mess and leaves much to be desired. I'm not saying all the addresses are faulty, only that too many of them are incomplete and faulty. I'm not alone in thinking this way.
All I can suggest is that you get involved in the community and start a grassroots campaign to overhaul the inept system which is causing you such aggravation.
Here's one place I had to go, and got lost finding. This was the faulty and incomplete address the business had listed as their address. There was no numerical address of WHERE on Ave 65 Infanteria this was located. I stopped to ask 2 people and they both pointed me in the wrong direction. I wasted over 30 minutes and still didn't find it until it was too late that day. What should have taken 15 minutes to get there took over 45 minutes over 2 days, not to mention the wasted gas, frustration. If you've already been there, you know where it is.
Ave 65 Infanteria
Carolina PR 00978
For those that scolded me telling me to learn how to use a map, how am I to know WHERE on the map that is located? Ave 65 Infanteria is a very long road.
How about you CALL the business you wanted to get to and ask THEM where they are located, and how to get there from so and so place? Is it really that difficult to make a phone call these days? That's what people did before GPS became so commonplace, believe it or not.
By the way, the way we do our addresses has worked for us. It's you and the GPS software that needs to adapt, not us. We do perfectly fine down there, thank you very much. Our address system is a Spanish leftover. Puerto Rico needs a lot of fixing, but "fixing" the address system is pretty far down on the priorities list, don't you think?
Last edited by theunbrainwashed; 07-25-2014 at 07:29 AM..
Learn to use a map! Not everyone uses or wants to use satellites to find a location. Perhaps these skills are not taught anymore. Here in Puerto Rico we have excellent road markings. Our roads are up and down, back and forth, and many of them have kilometre posts marked to tenths (hectometres). To my thinking that makes location easy enough to determine.
Yes, if we lived on a flat grid with parallel and perpendicular streets, finding a place marked by a street name would be easy. How boring!
Just learn how to navigate. It worked fine for me when I moved here. .This is not Nebraska.
Are you from a foreign country, just out of curiosity?
Not only using a map, but you can't go wrong with a telephone, either. I don't see what's so difficult about calling the place where you want to go and asking for directions. That's how all of us did it before the year 2000....
How about you CALL the business you wanted to get to and ask THEM where they are located, and how to get there from so and so place? Is it really that difficult to make a phone call these days? That's what people did before GPS became so commonplace, believe it or not.
By the way, the way we do our addresses has worked for us. It's you and the GPS software that needs to adapt, not us. We do perfectly fine down there, thank you very much. Our address system is a Spanish leftover. Puerto Rico needs a lot of fixing, but "fixing" the address system is pretty far down on the priorities list, don't you think?
Yes I could follow the inefficient time-wasting model to CALL all the businesses and ask them where they are located. This wastes my time AND theirs, and perhaps others as well, as other people are waiting for that employee to finish with me before moving on to them. I've called people for other reasons and been transferred around and waiting for 5 minutes to find someone who speaks English. Guess what, even YOU might be the person waiting on hold or in line at a business, while the employee is taking 5 minutes to verbally give me directions when this could have been avoided simply by using and publishing the standardized numerical address.
Following your line of reasoning, I also could ride a horse to get to where I want to go, for then I wouldn't have to get out of my car while asking for directions. Believe it or not, that's what people did before cars became so commonplace. That illustrates the backwardness or your argument. I better not complain about Internet, or else will you remind me that people use dial-up to get connected to the Internet? Why do we need Internet anyway, because before computers became so commonplace, people had to wait the next day for the printed newspaper and before that the telegraph?
The point isn't where fixing the addresses system is on the list. The point is that normalized standardized addresses should be adopted to save everyone time, not just me.
If you care about Puerto Rico, you shouldn't be so adamantly resisting progress that benefits society, especially Puerto Ricans. The kinds of backwards attitudes I'm finding in just this forum seem to be a microcosm of what's holding Puerto Rico back. If you are FOR a strong Puerto Rico, you should WANT it to be more efficient, which in turn makes the people more valuable and thus be able to be paid more.
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The problem is your GPS software, not PR's address system
