Milemarkers...what to do with them?

[The Premier]

^^^

In urban areas, Tennessee also has the blue signs with the small icons.  They are placed either one or two tenths apart.


20090831 I-65 N @ Exit 67-2C2 by mightyace, on Flickr

So does the rest of Ohio, except unlike the Cincinnati area, we only have them at 2/10 of a mile. Boo!

[Kacie Jane]

Washington State does it best, IMO. Nothing complicated- milemarkers are posted every mile on every route, always going west to east or south to north. The milemarkers are the big ones that are standard on freeways on all roads, on concurrencies the lowest numbered route of the highest class always gets to keep its mileposts (I think there is one exception to this- I want to say the SR 9/SR 542 concurrency uses SR 542s mileposts, but I could be wrong). It can't really be done any better than that.

I agree that Washington does it excellently and consistently.  I just noticed yesterday though that where they've installed the variable speed limits on I-5 northbound, they've gotten rid of the regular mileposts on that section, and put them on the sign bridges with the speed limit signs instead.  (The difference being that they're not spaced a mile apart, seemed to be 0.4-0.6 miles apart.)

As an aside though, SR 9/542 is the only concurrency between two state routes I can think of off the top of my head, and I can confirm that it follows 542's mileposts.  So higher level for sure, but I don't think lower number is a rule.

[corco]

As an aside though, SR 9/542 is the only concurrency between two state routes I can think of off the top of my head, and I can confirm that it follows 542's mileposts.  So higher level for sure, but I don't think lower number is a rule.

There's several others- 20/21, 509/516, 509/99, 512/161, 161/167, 9/530, 9/20, and 260/261 off the top of my head, and I'm sure there's a bunch more.

I drove every mile of state highway in Washington from 2007-2008 and was paying very careful attention to mileposting (because that was and is my point of reference for where reassurance shields were- I snap the shield, then take a snap of the next milepost, especially in rural areas where there aren't other telling details in the background) and while my memory is slowly fading, I'm 99% sure that 9/542 is the only non-freeway where the lower number gets snubbed because I remember it being a real outlier and thinking "WTF?" and then going back to try to figure out why, but SR 9 existed. No good reason, to my knowledge. SR 9 has existed just as long as 542 has, along that same routing.

The other one is that on the 512 freeway, SR 161 takes 512's mileposts where they concur, but I'd consider 512 to be a higher class of road because it is freeway for its entire existence and 161 is only a freeway where it overlaps 512.

I agree that Washington does it excellently and consistently.  I just noticed yesterday though that where they've installed the variable speed limits on I-5 northbound, they've gotten rid of the regular mileposts on that section, and put them on the sign bridges with the speed limit signs instead.  (The difference being that they're not spaced a mile apart, seemed to be 0.4-0.6 miles apart.)

Now that's pretty cool- I haven't been on I-5 since they did all that.

[Jim]

Albany-area freeways have the fractional milemarkers, but I don't remember if they're 0.1 or 0.2.

I remembered to look when on the Northway (I-87) this morning.  They're at 0.1 intervals at least near the southern end.  They have the word "Mile" then the mile number in white on green, the tenths are below that in green on white.

[Ian]

There are a few freeways in New Hampshire that use these rather large milemarkers:


They are installed at every 0.1 mile. A shield for every marker seems to be a bit of an overkill. Although it's hard to see, but just beyond the Junction NH 127 sign, there is a small mile marker with a shield on top which NHDOT likes to install every .5 miles on the more minor roads:

[lamsalfl]

There are no milemarkers on I-10 east of I-510 all the way to the Mississippi state line.  I'm patiently letting them finish building the Twinspan before I contact the state.

[Mr_Northside]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11081/1133723-56.stm

While this article is short on details, It sounds like PennDOT cares enough about accuracy to go thru and relocate Parkway East MM's.  (They replaced them just a couple of years ago with the I-376 extension)

[SidS1045]

Massachusetts is in the every-0.2 mile category, with a shield-replica marker every mile.

[wytout]

Massachusetts is in the every-0.2 mile category, with a shield-replica marker every mile.

This is quite new for MA, and they cropped up quickly over the entire state.  Oddly enough, the only limited access highway left in MAthat still has the traditional smaller Mile marker w/out shields and without interim .10's markers is the Mass Pike.

[mightyace]

^^^

I guess that will change soon since the Mass Pike has been folded into the state's DOT.

[lamsalfl]

Louisiana is now installing these "deluxe" milemarkers.  They're becoming widespread in the Greater New Orleans area.  Direction on top, small complete shield with "Interstate" in the shield, below that "MILE" and below that and horizontal the mile number.

[Brian556]

Texas only uses mile markers on interstates. On all other roads they use tiny "reference markers" that are only intended for internal DOT use.
These do not start with 1. I haven't bothered to look onto what the pattern is.
Something I've wondered about...what happens to the mile or reference markers when a road is realigned, adding distance between two markers.

[J N Winkler]

The Texas Reference Marker System is grid-based, so the little white-on-green numbers attached to route confirmation assemblies are grid references, not milepoints.

http://onlinemanuals.txdot.gov/txdotmanuals/trm/trm.pdf

I don't know in detail how relocations are handled.  For non-Interstates in Texas for which the reference markers are used, matters are straightforward because the change in length of the road is unimportant--the only thing that matters is whether the centerline moves to a different grid square.  I suspect that on Interstates resurveying of the centerline rarely happens because, unless the new alignment is quite far away from the old alignment, the difference in length between old and new alignments is too small to matter for the navigational purposes for which mileposting systems are typically used. 

[InterstateNG]

Wrong thread, perhaps, but can anyone explain why SH 130 east of Austin has exit numbers in the 400's?

[J N Winkler]

Chapter 7 of the TRM manual, which explains the grid system, seems to hint at the answer.  The zero points for each grid axis are set at the extreme northern and western points of the state (basically, southern border of the Oklahoma panhandle and El Paso) and the first marker available for assignment on each axis is 010.  On the north-south axis marker numbers increase going south, and on the east-west axis they increase going east.  Routes are assigned markers on one axis or the other according to their "book" direction of travel.

My guess is that SH 130 around Austin has exit numbers in the 400's because:

*  It has milepoint-based exit numbers

*  SH 130 is treated as a north-south route for purposes of location reference

*  The beginning (northern terminus) of SH 130 is about 400 miles south of the southern border of the Oklahoma panhandle

If I am right, exit numbers on SH 130 should actually increase going north to south (the opposite of the usual direction as mandated in the MUTCD).

[Brandon]

I'm kind of fond of these.



No silly tenths of a mile, easier to comprehend quarters of a mile.

[roadfro]

^ I'm certainly not fond of the mix of font sizes though.

It's interesting, in that this design with a fraction does actually seem a bit better than the standard design with decimal points, especially with how the decimal numbers are on a line separated by a horizontal line. But if one is using mileposts for navigation and reference within a vehicle, decimals may be slightly easier to follow than the fractions.

[mgk920]

Do they even bother with teaching fractions in skool anymore?  They haven't for a long time in most of the rest of the world due to a lack of need.

My thought:
(Motorist in distress, to dispatcher) "The sign says 'one two one' with a 'one slash four' below that".

Mike

[Brandon]

Do they even bother with teaching fractions in skool anymore?  They haven't for a long time in most of the rest of the world due to a lack of need.

My thought:
(Motorist in distress, to dispatcher) "The sign says 'one two one' with a 'one slash four' below that".

Mike

Yes, they still teach fractions, and they're a damn bit better for highway use than decimals (and work better than the damn French system).

1 1/4 MILES is much easier to discern when the slash falls off.  1.25 MILES becomes 125 MILES without the dot.

No one I know of (roadgeek and non-roadgeek) mistakes what the sign says - "one twenty-one and a quarter".

[bassoon1986]

Louisiana is now installing these "deluxe" milemarkers.  They're becoming widespread in the Greater New Orleans area.  Direction on top, small complete shield with "Interstate" in the shield, below that "MILE" and below that and horizontal the mile number.

The rest of LA is starting to install them. I saw them on I-20 and I-49 on my way to Alexandria last weekend, 49 only had them in Caddo and Desoto parish though with work starting in Natchitoches parish

[US71]

Missouri posts them every 1/10 mile on Interstates and major expressways like US 65 and US 71 in the Kansas City area. MoDOT calls them Emergency Markers

[realjd]

This is a pretty standard Florida combo mile marker with call box:
http://maps.google.com/?ll=26.963809,-80.17112&spn=0.015377,0.027466&t=m&z=16&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=26.963656,-80.171031&panoid=2UHTZmMUwMv0Q_PSvUlNcA&cbp=12,358.73,,0,2.25

They are the standard on most interstate highways. When they don't use those, they use a generic green sign with MILE on the top and the number arranged vertically below it. You'll see that style on a few state and US highways like US1 through the Keys but most aren't mileposted.

The call box markers as seen above aren't religiously placed every mile. Where it makes sense based on on/off ramps, they'll often place them at other odd distances and list them as something like "Mile 197.3" with the number entirely on one line.

[roadfro]

Missouri posts them every 1/10 mile on Interstates and major expressways like US 65 and US 71 in the Kansas City area. MoDOT calls them Emergency Markers

The MUTCD term is "Enhanced Reference Location Markers" (or "Intermediate Enhanced Reference Location Markers", for the ones with decimals between exact mileposts).

[roadman65]

I have seen them on US 31 in Indiana, that are blue, with a tiny US 31 shield on them in the median from Indy to Kokomo. 

US 1 has them from the Florida Turnpike to Key West, as there are no major crossroads between these two points.  Its the only non freeway route in Florida (although I think to have seen them on US 27 from Halieha to the Palm Beach Counly Line) to have them.

[The High Plains Traveler]

Missouri posts them every 1/10 mile on Interstates and major expressways like US 65 and US 71 in the Kansas City area. MoDOT calls them Emergency Markers

This has kept me awake at night for years, so do you have a theory why U.S. 169 immediately north of downtown KC has miles posted in the 100s even though it has just entered the state from Kansas?