We live in an old street called (let's say) Gloucester Street. The street next to ours, that was built/established 100+ years later is called Gloucester Lane. We regularly get post for the same number house on the other street, and they get post for us. We get takeaway deliveries too, which have been ordered by them, not us (we don't just say nothing and take them; we do tell the delivery person where to find the right house!) We had a tradesman turn up to give us a quote last week that had been requested (presumably by phone/online) by the other household.
A house came up for sale on Gloucester Street - one where I think an elderly person had lived, with a really decent sized front and back garden. It was bought by developers who knocked it down and have now built several new houses on the plot. As it happens, for some historical reason and as luck would have it, there were a few numbers missing, so there were enough for each new house to have its own number that would slot in perfectly and sequentially with the existing houses on the street.
Except the developers haven't done this. Instead, they have got permission for the very short mutual access drive for the new houses - no longer than several of the other single-house drives - to be given its own brand new name; and in their imaginative wisdom, somebody has named it Gloucester Rise.
We get this at my workplace as well – mail for an adjacent road with the same name (e.g. we are Burton Street and they are Burton Place) – and they get mail for us too. One a few days ago was clearly a letter from the NHS notifying them (well, us, I suppose) of their appointment.
I know plenty of other towns and cities (even villages) do the same thing - using the same name but different suffix for nearby roads. I don't know if other people's posties are as careless as our local ones, but I can't imagine that we're alone in that. Just why? Surely you must be insane not to realise that doing this is deliberately creating absolutely 100% avoidable confusion, inconvenience and disruption for potentially centuries into the future? We even have two different roads in our small town with the exact same name e.g. both called Church Street.
It's not like there aren't hundreds of thousands of different words available to choose from. How is this not Lesson 101 for a town planner/new road approver? It's kind of like the equivalent of naming your triplets Eve, Eva and Evie and genuinely not anticipating any confusion at all!