CARxR 1.10: Highway Numbering: County Signed Routes

[cahwyguy]

The next episode of the California Highways: Route by Route podcast is up.

In this episode, we complete our exploration of numbering of state highways by turning our attention to the County Signed Route system. This system, started in 1959, uses a blue pentagon with yellow numbers, and applies to significant routes at the county level. It is the last episode in a four part miniseries on highway numbers in California. In this episode we talk about the history of the County Signed Route system, how the routes are numbered, some significant county signed routes, and what is happening with the system today.

There is no interview. We're going to move the interview segments into separate bonus episodes, owing to the difficulty of obtaining and scheduling the interviews.

There are two episodes left in the season: one exploring highway naming, and one exploring the organizations related to the state highways.

Links: https://caroutebyroute.org/2023/04/22/carxr-1-10-highway-numbering-county-signed-routes/
or https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caroutebyroute/episodes/CARxR-1-10-Highway-Numbering-County-Signed-Routes-e22rjha

[Quillz]

County highways would work better if they were extensions of state highways. There are a few that do this, like J59, but then others don't. Something like A3 could be a natural extension of CA-3 (to reach US-97), the Sherman Pass Road (which is either a forest or county route) could be a 190 extension, and so on.

The way they're done now isn't very helpful because most don't seem to be signed anymore, and the quality is very hit or miss.

[rschen7754]

In doing research related to the latest Wikipedia crackdown on notability (https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=32652.0) it seems that Lake County has a ton of county routes, according to Google Maps. The de facto standard has been that if almost every road in the county is a county route (which appeared to be the case), then we don't consider a list of them notable, so unfortunately our list had to go. I was also up there last summer and didn't see any signs for them, nor could I find any on Google Street View.

The other day an article on a Humboldt County route turned up (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattole_Road), and apparently there is an extensive system there too. https://humboldtgov.org/2883/County-Maintained-Road-System

[Max Rockatansky]

Here is the road log for San Benito County I kept referencing in the podcast:

https://www.cosb.us/services/community/streets-highways

San Benito County is big on using Postmiles for all the roads it maintains.  Similarly I've found Tulare County, Calaveras County and Kern County do the same thing for mountain highways.

[cahwyguy]

I've also added links to https://caroutebyroute.org/2023/04/22/carxr-1-10-highway-numbering-county-signed-routes/ to a number of county GIS systems, as well as a link to a CSUN page that links to all county GIS systems (which often have road maps).

[pderocco]

In doing research related to the latest Wikipedia crackdown on notability (https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=32652.0) it seems that Lake County has a ton of county routes, according to Google Maps. The de facto standard has been that if almost every road in the county is a county route (which appeared to be the case), then we don't consider a list of them notable, so unfortunately our list had to go. I was also up there last summer and didn't see any signs for them, nor could I find any on Google Street View.

The other day an article on a Humboldt County route turned up (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattole_Road), and apparently there is an extensive system there too. https://humboldtgov.org/2883/County-Maintained-Road-System

In California, as in many western states, most rural routes are county routes in the sense that they are built and maintained by counties, and not the state or localities. The three-digit routes I see all over Lake County are not part of the County Sign Route system. Indeed, Lake doesn't have any roads in that program, according to cahighways.org, nor does Humboldt. The Central Valley also has a seemingly limitless supply of numbered county routes, but they're little more than street names, and usually use ordinary street signs to label them.

I've only seen a small number of blue and yellow pentagonal signs for county routes that don't begin with a letter, and aren't in the County Sign Route system. Those were up in the NE part of the state. So it's unclear whether those would be reasonable to include in a list. Cahighways.org doesn't.

[cahwyguy]

I've only seen a small number of blue and yellow pentagonal signs for county routes that don't begin with a letter, and aren't in the County Sign Route system. Those were up in the NE part of the state. So it's unclear whether those would be reasonable to include in a list. Cahighways.org doesn't.

I don't included them because (a) they are not consistent from county to county; (b) there are no good consistent lists or information on them; (c) they tend not to be used as reference numbers for the routes (or even signed with reassurance markers); and (d) there are no good lists. I've seen them in use in places like Modoc county.