How do you find a way in an unknown city? Yes, there are driving directions but they, typically, consist of street, bulevards, platzes, and other city infrastructure names. The problem with them is while you're driving you can't always read these names. In the US in some cities there is a good practice of signing forthcoming crossroads but this nice practice is not far accepted. In Germany usually every crossroad has a sign of both streets. Zurich is terrible in this sense - very few street tablets and signs. Vienna is even worse - few and far between street signs are hung on building and drawn by Gothic which for a foreigner's eye look unrecognizable like Chinese.
It is a great global practice to number exists on freeways. Drivers don't have to pay attention to the names but only to numbers and at the same time they can estimate how far the needed exist is. Ashkelon (Israel) made one step further and applied the same practice inside the city by putting number on traffic lights on main streets. Now when you give or follow directions no need to read street names but simply drive instead to an indicated light. Very useful, simple, cheap, and a great example of taking trouble of guest drivers. By the way, it's also a small step of building a positive image of the city.
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