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[J N Winkler]

This is, so far as I can tell, an unique example of a pure signing contract put out to tender by GDDKIA (Poland's national highway authority for motorways and trunk roads):

http://www.reprocentrum.pl/gddkia/523/

The individual sheets, which are all available for viewing and downloading, are in DjVu format.  Irfanview may be able to handle them natively; ACDSee will handle some (including the sign panel detail sheets) and choke on others (including the sign inventory sheets, which include full-color photographs of the existing signs).  The free (and open-source) DjVuLibre library, which is downloadable from SourceForge, allows easy and reasonably rapid conversion of DjVu to TIFF.  The sign panel detail sheets are pattern-accurate and show Drogowskaz (the Polish traffic signing typeface) in all its crotchety glory.

The main change between the existing and new signs is that the major German cities accessible from the A-4 are now to be explicitly signed, with distances given on route confirmation signs.  The Polish A-4 is the eastward continuation of the German A4, for which the Poles have chosen Dresden as the control city.  The A-4 interchanges with the A-36 and Berlin is used as the control city for traffic exiting the A-4 for the A-36.  The existing signs give no indication whatsoever of German cities; instead, the Polish border towns (Zgorzelec/Jedrzychowice on the A-4, and Olszyna on the A-36) are signed by themselves.

I think the new signs are, broadly speaking, an improvement on the existing ones.  The big German cities are more logical choices for forward destinations because of their traffic importance and since Poland is now in the Schengen zone, there are no frontier controls which would warrant special treatment in signing.  The new signs can also be interpreted as making a political statement and, on the whole, I think it is a positive one.  My only concern is a technical one:  since the border towns will continue to be signed, the new signs are somewhat message-heavy.

[Chris]

The current standard of signing minuscule border towns from literally 400 to as much as 800 kilometers away is my biggest pet peeve of Polish signage. Domestic signage is pretty good, but the border towns are not relevant, especially since most signs show the border towns ONLY, such as along A4 and DK18. For instance Jędrzychowice has only 643 inhabitants. Zgorzelec does have some importance though. Budzisko is much worse, it's like 5 farms and it's signed as much as 800 kilometers in advance. Foreigners generally have no idea where these villages are because they do not appear on maps.

The infamous Budzisko:

[agentsteel53]

would this be the first time that out-of-country destinations were signed in Poland?  I just looked through my Poland photos from Nov, 2011 and indeed every town posted was in Poland.  But, for the most part, this did not seem unusual to me because they were at most tens of kilometers away, not hundreds. 

I actually drove a bit of A-4 eastbound out of Germany, but did not look back at the destinations westbound.  For the most part, I drove small roads so the use of tiny villages as control cities did not raise an eyebrow.

[Chris]

There are some signs indicating Berlin and Ostrava (Czech Rep.) and I also recently saw photos of L'viv (Ukraine) being signed along the new A4 in southeastern Poland.

Border towns used to be of significance in central Europe, because they were huge barriers to transportation with waiting time in the hours, which is still occurring along the eastern EU border with Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. On the other hand, that's no excuse for signing border villages exclusively, cross-border traffic needs to get a sense of the general direction too, and you'll get that by signing major cities, not villages that are hardly found on maps.

The main problem in Poland is/was the A4/A18 interchange near Krzywa, where you had to pick your route based on the villages of Jędrzychowice and Olszyna, while they represent the routes to Dresden and Berlin respectively.

[kphoger]

Yeah, imagine the above sign without Warszawa listed!

[nexus73]

All the signs would be in German if they had won WWII.  Problem solved...LOL!

Rick

[Truvelo]

That interchange is interesting. Instead of being a normal trumpet one of the ramps has an extra bridge to make it merge on the right.

[KEVIN_224]

@ Chris: I take it that the highway you were on wasn't that old? It sure doesn't look it!

[cpzilliacus]

The main change between the existing and new signs is that the major German cities accessible from the A-4 are now to be explicitly signed, with distances given on route confirmation signs.  The Polish A-4 is the eastward continuation of the German A4, for which the Poles have chosen Dresden as the control city.  The A-4 interchanges with the A-36 and Berlin is used as the control city for traffic exiting the A-4 for the A-36.  The existing signs give no indication whatsoever of German cities; instead, the Polish border towns (Zgorzelec/Jedrzychowice on the A-4, and Olszyna on the A-36) are signed by themselves.

Some distance to the northwest of there, the E20 motorway crosses the Øresund Bridge (in my opinion, this should be called a bridge-tunnel, for that is what it is, even though the tunnel portion is relatively short (at about 1 km)) compared to the cable-stayed bridge, which is almost 8 km long).

Getting back to your subject, the Danish Highway Administration (Vejdirektoratet) faithfully signs the control city approaching the last E20 exit prior to the crossing in Kastrup, Denmark as Malmø (instead of the Swedish Malmö) (example here on Google Maps).

Not to be outdone, the Swedish Ministry of Transport (Trafikverket) signs control cities on the the Swedish approach to the crossing as Köpenhamn (instead of the Danish København) and Kastrup (the Swedes don't have their own way of spelling that) (example here on Google Maps).

Interestingly, both Denmark and Sweden warn drivers (in English) that they are approaching a segment of the highway that is tolled.

[Chris]

This is probably the longest (more or less) continuously signed destination in Poland. The village of Budzisko at the Lithuanian border:

[cpzilliacus]

This is probably the longest (more or less) continuously signed destination in Poland. The village of Budzisko at the Lithuanian border:

Interesting (and logical) that the routing of highway E67 entirely avoids the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast.

[Road Hog]

I like the font of the Polish signs. Is it some variant of Futura?

[Scott5114]

I work with Futura a lot in my second job...no, it's not Futura. It appears to be of the same "geometric design" family of fonts though.

[J N Winkler]

It is called "Drogowskaz" (which I think is Polish for "road font").