Correos de Costa Rica, the country’s postal service, is slowly advancing on a project to give Costa Rica’s streets and buildings new designations, but the new addresses won’t be in use anytime soon, officials told The Tico Times this week.
The postal service estimates that it will take Costa Ricans more than a decade to change from the current system of giving directions that reference landmarks, some of which disappeared years ago.
The new addresses will have three parts: avenue, street and number of meters from the corner where those roads intersect to the front door of the building (TT, July 8, 2005).
The new address project was launched in 2003 and became official late last year through a decree.
The plan is for municipalities to put up signs on streets corners, and for home and building owners to put up their own address plaques, according to the daily La Nación. Labeling the street corners of San José is expected to cost about $1 million.
Correos has already worked out the addresses of 400,000 buildings, but the postal service predicts – based on the experiences of other nations – that it will take 10 to 15 years for Ticos to begin using the new system regularly, said Geovanni Campos, chief of distribution for Correos de Costa Rica, in an e-mail to The Tico Times.
