Every time I’ve been to an airport and looked out the window, I see numbers and letters on the runways/taxiways. How are these numbers determined?
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Runways typically reflect the compass heading, divided by 10. (Runway 18 points approximately 180 degrees, aka south, while the other end of that same runway is named 36 as it points 360° aka north).
Parallel runways will often use a L/R suffix to mark left/right of a pair (and sometimes C for center), or just consecutive numbers.
Taxiways don’t have as strict of guidelines, but are often assigned sequentially (at large airports like JFK this easily becomes a complex layout) Two letter (or letter followed by a digit) are usually short taxiways connecting/branching off the namesake taxiway, such as those connecting to various points of a parallel runway
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