Fantastic pictures! What an amazing road system. I know there's a large German population in Chile....I wonder if that has affected the development of their freeway system. For example, this picture shows the wonderful 'Autobahn-style' exit countdown markers.
Those countdown markers are used all over Europe and are not uniquely German, though I think they were first developed in Germany in the 1930's. (The original versions quoted the distance in 200 m increments rather than 100 m increments as now.)
Chilean direction signing looks to me more influenced by Spain and Brazil. It uses the Spanish exit symbol, for one thing. Legend blocks are horizontally centered and there is minimum use of diagrammatics on overhead signs, as in Spain. Ground-mounted signs use the fork diagrammatic but this is very common in Europe (except in Switzerland and, oddly enough, Spain) and also in other South American countries like Brazil and, I think, Peru. The
retorno symbol is a very Latin American thing. Since the fork sign is used for all ground-mounted advance signing, not just the signs after the first, the basic approach seems to have more in common with France and Britain than Germany, although I suspect the real model was Brazil.
Chile has had a quite good and pattern-accurate signing manual online for a long time--well before we had one of our own with the 2003
MUTCD, in fact:
http://www.subtrans.cl/subtrans/documentos/senalizacion.htmlThe second chapter contains the bulk of the signing advice dealing with upright signs, including dimensioned drawings for each standard sign.
I am going to have a look to see if Chile places construction documentation online, as is done in most US states, some Canadian provinces, and some European countries like France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Italy. The advertisements are online but the documentation is often a different matter because of bulk.
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Topic: Highways in Chile (Read 6895 times)