Question about captial city freeway signage

[SacRoadGeek916]

Maybe a caltrans engineer can help me with this. Why is Business Loop 80 signage as capital city freeway seems so arbitrary/random? Here is what I observe:

I-5 North: Signed as Capital City Freeway
I-5 South: Signed only as Business Loop 80
99 North: Signed as Capital City Freeway on the median mile market, NOT signed at the on the big sign where the control city is
I-80 West: Signed as Capital City Freeway
US-50 West: Signed only as Business Loop 80

Probably some other ones I'm missing, but you get the idea.

I've NEVER seen it signed as CCF on a freeway onramp, only business 80.

[roadfro]

My guess would be that it has to do age of signage. I've noticed more recent signs seem to have had incorporated the "Capital City Freeway" moniker. It may also have to do with what else is on the sign and whether there is room to write it out. There's also the note that MUTCD (and the CA version, IIRC) advises/mandates that freeway names like this not appear on mainline signage.

[TheStranger]

There's also the note that MUTCD (and the CA version, IIRC) advises/mandates that freeway names like this not appear on mainline signage.

It seems like the "Capital City Freeway" project is one point where this was intentionally subverted, in order to encourage more usage of the name as opposed to "Business 80."  (EDIT: Other example I can think of is the Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway/Route 94 in San Diego - there are numerous scattered examples of overhead freeway name signage in metro Los Angeles on new installations, but those tend to be direct replacements of older signs rather than new additions)

The name does show up on the 2009-installed signs going east on 80 in West Sacramento.

[jrouse]

TheStranger is correct.  Ever since the Business 80 designation appeared in 1983, there has been a tremendous amount of confusion between it and Interstate 80.  Even my wife, a native of Sacramento, gets confused.  So in the mid-1990s, the City of Sacramento petitioned Caltrans to help come up with a solution to the confusion by renaming the freeway.  The name selected was Capital City Freeway.  Caltrans initiated a project shortly thereafter to place the name on several signs along Business 80. 

As SacRoadGeek916 points out, the name is not seen on signs on every intersecting freeway. The project involved placing "greenout" on existing signs or replacing existing signs where the term "BUS", "BUSINESS LOOP", was used.  The other signs did not include these terms, and it is likely that the name was not installed on those signs due to the amount of space available on the panel.  The project included the installation of two new ground-mounted signs bearing the new name.  These signs were placed between the American River bridge and the downtown area.

Several of the signs installed in this project have been replaced as part of freeway upgrades and the name was retained on the replacement signing.  In addition, maintenance crews later installed "greenout" with the new name over the control city of Sacramento on the ramps to Business 80 from the Route 244 freeway stub.

Joe Rouse
(Please note that I work for Caltrans but do not officially speak for them on this board)