Zoetermeer’s mystery: this is the difference between a street, avenue and lane

taketonews

The Meidoornlaan, Gaardedreef and Dorpsstraat have been part of the Zoetermeer road network for a long time. But why are these locations called -laan, -dreef or -straat? That reason can be found in the past!

Let’s start with the word “street”. According to overstraatnamen.nl This word comes from Latin through strata. strata is a conjugation of the verb sterner which means ‘to spread out’ and ‘to level out’, among other things. The name ‘street road’ is old-fashioned, although it means the same as ‘street’. Streets or roads in Zoetermeer are literally paved.

Along the long Lindelaan

‘Liesje taught lotje to walk along the long Lindelaan.’ You may remember this rhyme from the past, but what does this rhyme say about an avenue? Well, the linden explains a lot. An avenue is a road with trees on both sides. Just look at the Julianalaan or Meidoornlaan.

In Middle Dutch, the predecessor of modern Dutch, the meaning of an avenue is: ‘side road, road that connects a certain final destination with a main road’. Rather in the form of a driveway. The current meaning ‘road with trees’ exists from (approximately) the year 1600.

The Garden Drive

Then we also have the Gaardedreef in Zoetermeer. Traditionally, a lane is a wide country road. Why this is? In the past, people drove the cattle (get it?) on these roads to locations where the animals could graze.

Did you know that a street name can determine whether your house is worth more or less? So it turned out Australian research that houses with a separate street name were worth less than houses with a fancy street name. In Belgium showed that a house on a lane is worth 6 percent more than the same house on a street. If you want to sell a house in the US on a street with “boulevard” in the name, you can up to 36 percent more questions than if the street name contains ‘street’. Next time, take a good look at the street name when you move!

Run and go

Well, then we have now had the normal street and the greener avenue and driveway. Yet there are other roads in Zoetermeer such as the Lijnbaan and the JL van Rijweg. The difference between them is a bit trickier. A road is ‘a strip of land suitable for traffic’. A job, on the other hand, is ‘a road without obstacles’. For example, there used to be no traffic lights on the Lijnbaan, and that is still the case.

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