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One Sign or Two Signs?

Started by Amaury, November 12, 2024, 05:19:50 AM

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Amaury

Probably a trivial thing, but I'm curious. What determines whether there's only one sign or two signs at the same place on a road? (This is putting aside one-way streets in city limits.)

And it's only for certain signs, like speed limits, some yellow cautionary signs, stop signs, etc. I'm not including Freeway Entrances signs, as at least here in Washington, they're consistently on both sides of the roadway at entrance ramps. Likewise for stop, do not enter, and wrong way signs on exit ramps.

Using some Washington examples, for right side only:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fpdfG4gG5v2QTHub7
https://maps.app.goo.gl/SF7ZDkp6TRMJsTkm7

Examples of both sides of the road:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/cX2KPhkw7xuKTLvP9
https://maps.app.goo.gl/KWmm1gjCd5ZE6sJdA
https://maps.app.goo.gl/bfzMjt4mi2jNNQ7K9

On both sides, it seems to be more common on the Westside or the closer you get to the Westside, at least along I-90. Is it for safety, like maybe particularly known dangerous areas, or something else?
"We stand before a great darkness, but remember, darkness can't exist where light is. Let's be that light!" —Rean Schwarzer (The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel))

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pderocco

Quote from: Amaury on November 12, 2024, 05:19:50 AMProbably a trivial thing, but I'm curious. What determines whether there's only one sign or two signs at the same place on a road? (This is putting aside one-way streets in city limits.)

And it's only for certain signs, like speed limits, some yellow cautionary signs, stop signs, etc. I'm not including Freeway Entrances signs, as at least here in Washington, they're consistently on both sides of the roadway at entrance ramps. Likewise for stop, do not enter, and wrong way signs on exit ramps.

Using some Washington examples, for right side only:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fpdfG4gG5v2QTHub7
https://maps.app.goo.gl/SF7ZDkp6TRMJsTkm7

Examples of both sides of the road:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/cX2KPhkw7xuKTLvP9
https://maps.app.goo.gl/KWmm1gjCd5ZE6sJdA
https://maps.app.goo.gl/bfzMjt4mi2jNNQ7K9

On both sides, it seems to be more common on the Westside or the closer you get to the Westside, at least along I-90. Is it for safety, like maybe particularly known dangerous areas, or something else?

What determines it? The phase of the moon when they installed the signage, I think.

That's the first time I've ever seen a stop sign on both sides of a two-way road. That's worth a picture.

That said, it's certainly the case that on two-way roads, especially if they're only two lanes, there's rarely any reason to double up the signs. On one-way roads with multiple lanes, doubling up would be sensible for signs that pertain to the entire road. But signs that only apply to the rightmost or leftmost lane would only belong on that side.

Rothman

Quote from: pderocco on November 12, 2024, 11:56:26 PMThat's the first time I've ever seen a stop sign on both sides of a two-way road. That's worth a picture.

It's quite common.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

Ted$8roadFan

Around here, I've usually seen them on busy roads at 4-way stops, to give drivers extra notice to slow down.

1995hoo

If a multilane road carries a high volume of large vehicles like big trucks, I can see the value in posting things like warning signs and speed limit signs on both sides to make them more visible to people in the left lane when a string of large trucks is blocking the view of signs mounted off to the right.
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wanderer2575

I think a lot of it is simply the discretion of whoever happens to be designing the signs and their placement for a particular scenario.  There is lots of variation out there about how a particular road feature is signed.  Not just one sign vs. two, but also whether an END assembly is posted at the end of a numbered route, whether EXIT ONLY is shown on the 1-mile or farther advance exit signs, whether a speed advisory is posted, whether a cardinal direction is shown on exit signs for a numbered route proceeding in only one direction from the interchange, whether certain abbreviations are used (e.g. MDOT Metro Detroit region sometimes spells out "Grand" and sometimes still uses "Gd"), etc.

Amaury

#6
Quote from: pderocco on November 12, 2024, 11:56:26 PMThat's the first time I've ever seen a stop sign on both sides of a two-way road. That's worth a picture.

There are also these farther back: https://maps.app.goo.gl/kMzXkxxmqfP5z1NT8

For both the stop ahead sign and the stop sign itself for this particular junction, it looks like the ones on the left were installed as recently as 2017.
"We stand before a great darkness, but remember, darkness can't exist where light is. Let's be that light!" —Rean Schwarzer (The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel))

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jay8g

In recent years, WSDOT has added a lot of left-side signs for intersections (and sometimes curves) that have a high collision rate. Generally they're in locations where there were already right-side signs but things still weren't going all that great. For intersections, it's basically a short-term step in locations where they might install roundabouts in the future but don't currently have the funding.

jeffandnicole

In Delaware, when they finally posted 65 mph on I-95, they appeared to create a policy that all highway speed limit signs on 95, 495 and DE 1 were to be on both sides of the roadway, regardless of the limit.  While good for when speed limits change, it seems a bit unnecessary when there's 2 lanes in each direction and the limit doesn't change.

As mentioned, 2 Stop signs on a road is fairly common, so that doesn't seem strange to me.

Amaury

Quote from: jay8g on November 17, 2024, 12:48:41 AMIn recent years, WSDOT has added a lot of left-side signs for intersections (and sometimes curves) that have a high collision rate. Generally they're in locations where there were already right-side signs but things still weren't going all that great. For intersections, it's basically a short-term step in locations where they might install roundabouts in the future but don't currently have the funding.

Here are a couple of examples that I remember off the top of my head for curves:

Eastbound I-90 at Exit 42: https://maps.app.goo.gl/fpjZrdfYsv2kLUoEA
Eastbound I-90 shortly before Exit 62: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MFNkmMTKkBCFDBKc6

There are also some instances where a sign is only meant for one side, but is on the left instead of the default right for some reason, such as the Yakima/Benton County line on I-82, where the county signs are in the median:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/tfKsLe9Gb8CVL9ZV7
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aoWNWS2HmXNtCqrA7
"We stand before a great darkness, but remember, darkness can't exist where light is. Let's be that light!" —Rean Schwarzer (The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel))

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pderocco

Quote from: Amaury on November 17, 2024, 04:39:26 AMThere are also some instances where a sign is only meant for one side, but is on the left instead of the default right for some reason, such as the Yakima/Benton County line on I-82, where the county signs are in the median:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/tfKsLe9Gb8CVL9ZV7
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aoWNWS2HmXNtCqrA7

That's understandable because it's more efficient to pull the truck over onto the median and install two signs than to do two separate operations on each side of the road.



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