In just a little over 3½ miles, one city street in Manteca carries four different names.
It starts just north of Louise Avenue east of Highway 99 as Cottage Avenue. It turns into Spreckels Avenue when it crosses Yosemite Avenue. Next it becomes Industrial Park Drive once it clears Moffat Boulevard. It then becomes Mission Ridge Drive after crossing South Main Street before reaching a T-intersection at Union Road.
The City Council took steps Tuesday to avoid a repeat of such a confusion string of names on one continuous road when they approved the first reading of an amendment to the municipal street name ordinance.
It’s not the only street in Manteca with split names. Among others are Northwoods Avenue/Commerce Avenue, Crom Street/Cherry Lane, as well as Elm Avenue/Yvonne Avenue.
Much of the changes are nitty gritty details needed for a street numbering system that is consistent so that emergency responders — as well as the general public — can easily find addresses.
Details such as the hierarchy of how suites are numbered that share a common street address at commercial complexes and in multiple story buildings are included as well as how numbers will be assigned to addresses.
Examples include:
uOn north-south streets, odd numbers must be on the west side and even numbers must be on the east side.
uOn east-west streets, odd numbers must be on the north side and even numbers
uNumbers must be sequential along a continuous street.
uNumber must not be consecutive directly across the street. For example: 634 Your Street and 635 Your Street.
uAdjacent addresses cannot have the same number in the “ones” place. For example: 635 Your Street and 645 Your Street.
uNumbers must not be consecutively even or odd on the same side of the street. For example, having 634 Your Street and 636 Your Street next to each other.
uAvoid numbers associated with superstitions such as 666, 444, or 1313.

What’s in a name?
With Manteca on the brink of adding upwards of 50,000 more residents over the next 50 years that means there will be a lot of new streets.
And how those streets will be named will no longer be haphazard.
The city will generate appropriate names developers can choose from for new subdivisions with a pool of 150 available at any given time. Those names will pass the approval of a Public Safety Review Group that includes at least one representative from the Manteca Fire Department, Manteca Police Department, and the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office.
Street names will be limited to 19 “letters” including spaces. They also must be easy to pronounce.
The agency that dispatches fire and medical in the South County area will also weigh on duplicate street names in Manteca, Lathrop, South Stockton and areas in between that could cause confusion and slow down critical mutual aid response such as if Manteca named a street Harlan such as Harlan Road in Lathrop.
Information Technology Geographical Information Systems Analyst Pennie Arounsack Marques noted uniformity with street naming and addressing “can save lives.”
She noted most other nearby cities already have such policies in place. Staff used them as the starting framework to amend the Manteca municipal code.
The amendment as approved also restricts how street suffixes from “avenue” to “way” can be used.
Examples include:
uCourt is restricted to east-west cul-de-sacs.
uPlace is restricted to north-south cul-de-sacs.
uAvenue is restricted to straight north south streets.
uStreet is restricted to straight east-west streets.
uCrescent is restricted to a short street with single bend.
uBoulevard is restricted to a divided street with two or more lanes in each direction.
Moffat Boulevard — if it were to be named today — could not use the boulevard suffix.
That said the city has no plans to correct street names that don’t adhere to the new standards or where “mistakes” were made.
Council members alluded to some mistakes over the years that have caused significant confusion from people trying to find addresses including first responders.

Two streets skip two city blocks each
The worst example is Aldwina Lane. It starts at North Powers Avenue and goes east for a block before turning to the south as Hansen Street. Aldwina Lane reappears a block after that curve between Marie Avenue and Mylnar Avenue and then disappears again for a block. It is then picked up at Charles Avenue before ending a block away at Cottage Avenue. The two blocks that are skipped have a narrow connecting walkway between the side yards of homes. Pine Street to the south skips a block in similar fashion between Fremont Street and Garfield Avenue.
Edythe Street south of Yosemite Avenue between El Capitan Avenue and Locust Avenue actually skips two blocks at one point.
Then there are offsetting intersections of several streets including East Alameda that not only is out of alignment by nearly a half block when it “crosses” North Powers Avenue but is actually closer to connecting with Sierra Street that is less than 80 feet offset from where Alameda comes from Cottage T intersects into Powers.