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States that suck at signing

Started by OCGuy81, January 28, 2017, 11:35:38 PM

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OCGuy81

Since moving to Oregon, I've found the state to be pretty poor at signing.  There aren't very many reassurance shields, and I find a huge lack of JCT signs before approaching another highway. Often times, there will be a small reassurance shield, sporadically, before a bridge almost like it was put up as an afterthought.

What states do you find particularly bad at signage?


Sykotyk

Arkansas is the worst. Primarily due to the unwillingness to sign multiplexes. Which, if you're following a route, and it joins another, the reassurance shields are near impossible.

Max Rockatansky

#2
California can be pretty bad but largely depends on what district you're in or if there is a relinquishment that might lead to some odd lack of signage by whatever locality the roadway is handed over to. 

hbelkins

Tennessee. Primary and secondary routes often wrongly signed, routes not signed well in cities, concurrencies rarely and poorly signed.


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

national highway 1

In Australia, Queensland is notoriously renowned for horrible, inconsistent, inaccurate and poorly designed signage which is fairly commonplace across the entire state. Not to mention that Queensland has only partially converted a handful of routes from a shielded system to an alphanumeric system and also that their state route system has multiple routes with duplicated numbers on unrelated routes throughout the entire state.
This link has an in-depth analysis of Queensland's state route system.
http://www.ozroads.com.au/QLD/routenumbering/state/stateroutes.htm
"Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take." Jeremiah 31:21

national highway 1

Here are several shocking examples of signage in Queensland.





"Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take." Jeremiah 31:21

oscar

#6
Hard to top Alaska, where the locals pay no attention to route signs (like Hawaiians, generally referring to highways by name rather than number), and the state DOT seems to view them just as an accommodation to tourists. AK 11 has a 175-mile gap between its south end and the first set of reassurance markers. At least in 2012, AK 5 had route markers only at its south end at the Alaska Highway, not even at a major junction north of Chicken where it's not obvious which way to turn to stay on AK 5. At least junctions between state routes get route signs, though the one multiplex (between AK 1 and AK 4) is poorly signed.

my Hot Springs and Highways pages, with links to my roads sites:
http://www.alaskaroads.com/home.html

corco

Oregon by default puts reassurance shields on bridge signs for some reason - not an afterthought at all. The problem is they are barely anywhere else - often because the cross streets have a perpendicular facing shield with arrows.

dvferyance

Virginia many of their routes are only marked by these little signs with little arrows on them.

dvferyance

Quote from: national highway 1 on January 31, 2017, 06:01:55 PM
In Australia, Queensland is notoriously renowned for horrible, inconsistent, inaccurate and poorly designed signage which is fairly commonplace across the entire state. Not to mention that Queensland has only partially converted a handful of routes from a shielded system to an alphanumeric system and also that their state route system has multiple routes with duplicated numbers on unrelated routes throughout the entire state.
This link has an in-depth analysis of Queensland's state route system.
http://www.ozroads.com.au/QLD/routenumbering/state/stateroutes.htm
I think all of Australia should go back to the old route system. The alphanumeric system is too confusing.

kphoger

Quote from: dvferyance on February 01, 2017, 05:31:20 PM
Virginia many of their routes are only marked by these little signs with little arrows on them.

No, no, no.  Think about how many routes are actually signed by number, though.  The signs may be small, but it sure beats the pants off not numbering them or signing them at all.
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Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

dvferyance

Quote from: kphoger on February 02, 2017, 01:06:55 PM
Quote from: dvferyance on February 01, 2017, 05:31:20 PM
Virginia many of their routes are only marked by these little signs with little arrows on them.

No, no, no.  Think about how many routes are actually signed by number, though.  The signs may be small, but it sure beats the pants off not numbering them or signing them at all.
I get not using the circle shield at every junction but there are many secondary routes of more significance and they are all still just marked by these tiny signs along them it's hard to see going 55 MPH. The circle shields are only used along the major primary highways.

Brandon

Illinois can be highly variable by district.  Some, like District 1 (Schaumburg) can be rather anal-retentive about signage.  Others, like District 8 (Collinsville) can be rather sloppy.
"If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention." - Ramsay Bolton

"Symbolic of his struggle against reality." - Reg

OCGuy81

Another thing I noticed on Oregon is that they don't seem to like to use "TO" on signs all that much.

cl94

Quote from: hbelkins on January 28, 2017, 11:54:06 PM
Tennessee. Primary and secondary routes often wrongly signed, routes not signed well in cities, concurrencies rarely and poorly signed.

Noticed that quite a bit when I was down there last fall. Quite a few primaries/secondaries mixed up.
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jakeroot

Quote from: dvferyance on February 01, 2017, 05:32:30 PM
Quote from: national highway 1 on January 31, 2017, 06:01:55 PM
In Australia, Queensland is notoriously renowned for horrible, inconsistent, inaccurate and poorly designed signage which is fairly commonplace across the entire state. Not to mention that Queensland has only partially converted a handful of routes from a shielded system to an alphanumeric system and also that their state route system has multiple routes with duplicated numbers on unrelated routes throughout the entire state.

I think all of Australia should go back to the old route system. The alphanumeric system is too confusing.

Well, the US uses alphanumeric, we just don't post the letters on the signs (minus a few states like Rhode Island and Michigan, amongst others). QLD's system of just using the letter before the number allows the use of repeated numbers (for example, A1 and M1 are both allowed because it's basically impossible to confuse the two), plus you don't have to rely on the driver knowing which shield represents which route type. It's a much more fool-proof system, especially if there's several layers of route types (motorway, A-road, B-road, or Interstate, Primary State Highway, Secondary State Highway).

jakeroot

Not sure what you mean by "signing", so I'm going to assume you mean all signage.

British Columbia has some pretty bad quality control (both with old and new signage), and they love to leave up old highway shields of routes that have been long decommissioned. Examples of both below (some photos my own, some street view). While their signage can be rocky, they've cleaned up their act in recent years, and their APL approach to junction signage is genius, and should be utilised more often in other provinces/states.

Are you fucking kidding me...


Route hasn't existed for several years (there are many other examples but this is my only photo)....


A couple (almost) unreadable signs...



Almost every street blade in Surrey is stretched for some reason...




A lot of old signs that are cool because old, but are way past their life span...



Scott5114

We went this far into a thread called "states that suck at signing" and Oklahoma hasn't been mentioned once?

Oklahoma has problems with concepts such as "capital letters do not go in the middle of words" and "all letters on a sign should be more or less the same size".
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

hbelkins

Quote from: Scott5114 on February 03, 2017, 02:55:04 AM
We went this far into a thread called "states that suck at signing" and Oklahoma hasn't been mentioned once?

Oklahoma has problems with concepts such as "capital letters do not go in the middle of words" and "all letters on a sign should be more or less the same size".

I think the topic is meant to be general and not limited to Craig County.  :bigass:


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

adventurernumber1

#19
Quote from: hbelkins on January 28, 2017, 11:54:06 PM
Tennessee. Primary and secondary routes often wrongly signed, routes not signed well in cities, concurrencies rarely and poorly signed.

I second this. I remember when one of the challenges in the "Daily Picture Challenge!" thread back in January was something along the lines of "post signage showing two consecutive route numbers together," and one of the first examples that sprang to my mind was the TN SR 320/TN SR 321 intersection (both of which are secondary routes). I looked on Google Maps Streetview only to find that there was not adequate signage at all. There was no signage that showed the two numbers together, there was no END signage for TN 320, and more. I haven't been to this intersection in real life in years, so I had no memory of this until I came across it on GMSV. I think that in general TDOT does a fairly good job with their roads, but they could do much better at signing.
Now alternating between different highway shields for my avatar - my previous highway shield avatar for the last few years was US 76.

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Scott5114

Quote from: hbelkins on February 03, 2017, 11:10:30 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 03, 2017, 02:55:04 AM
We went this far into a thread called "states that suck at signing" and Oklahoma hasn't been mentioned once?

Oklahoma has problems with concepts such as "capital letters do not go in the middle of words" and "all letters on a sign should be more or less the same size".

I think the topic is meant to be general and not limited to Craig County.  :bigass:

I'm pretty sure I can find at least one ugly sign in all 77 counties. :P
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

Big John


Plutonic Panda


plain

Quote from: Plutonic Panda on February 04, 2017, 01:23:44 AM
Quote from: Big John on February 03, 2017, 10:52:16 PM
More OK:

now how the fuck do you do that?

Damn even the E and the F in LEFT looks crazy


And I agree with whoever said Arkansas earlier
Newark born, Richmond bred

jp the roadgeek

Surprised CT hasn't been mentioned yet.  Absolutely horrible in comparison to MA and NY, who put mile markers and reference route signs on all state maintained highway.  The section of I-84 I drive on often through Greater Hartford has so many missing mileposts, and many of the ones there are illegible. Also, CT (except in one spot), does not label the beginning and endpoints of state routs like most states do.  But the thing that sucks the most: reflective button copy signs that are grossly outdated like this one:

Interstates I've clinched: 97, 290 (MA), 291 (CT), 291 (MA), 293, 295 (DE-NJ-PA), 295 (RI-MA), 384, 391, 395 (CT-MA), 395 (MD), 495 (DE), 610 (LA), 684, 691, 695 (MD), 695 (NY), 795 (MD)



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