SAN JOSE - San Jose, Costa
Rica, unveiled plans on Thursday to install its first
street signs, so residents will not have to cite local landmarks
like fast-food chains or gas stations when giving directions.
Municipal workers will install about 22,000 signs and plaques on
street corners in the city, home to 1.4 million people, where the
current informal system is tolerated by residents, but creates
headaches for visitors and the post office.
"My current home address is 200 meters north of the Pizza Hut
then 400 meters west, but in a few months, I will be able to give a
proper street name and a number," San Jose Mayor Johnny Araya said
during a ceremony where the first street sign was placed.
Other popular landmarks residents use to describe how to get
somewhere include the McDonald's restaurant chain, former President
and Nobel Prize-winner Oscar Arias' house, a famous fig tree that
has long since died and the site of an old cattle shed turned gas
station.
Many streets will be named after illustrious political and
intellectual figures from Costa Rican history.
Araya hopes the plan will reduce economic losses caused by
undelivered, returned or re-sent mail, estimated at $720 million a
year by the Inter-American Development Bank in 2008.
Almost one-quarter of the country's mail never reaches its
destination, a spokesman for the Costa Rican post office said.
Postal codes were introduced in 2007 to help matters, but no one
uses them because they do not know how to find them.
Costa Rica embarked on a street-naming crusade about 30 years
ago, but the signposts were never installed. This time, funding
from two different banks made the $1 million project possible.
Once the signage is up, Araya intends to undertake a campaign to
encourage use of the new system, which is expected to encounter
some resistance.
"I don't think it's going to work", 29-year-old taxi driver
Manuel Perez said. "If a tourist tells me to take him to a hotel in
whatever street, I'm going to say 'you're speaking to me in
Chinese,' because I don't know where that is. I need a
landmark."
