Unique, Odd, or Interesting Signs aka The good, the bad, and the ugly

[hbelkins]

Not just a school, a slow school. (On one of the US 45 branches in west Tennessee...)

[thefraze_1020]

Candidate for "Department of Redundancy Department"?

[cl94]

I saw a few goodies in and near North Adams, MA today.

OLD town line sign and speed limit sign
Another identical speed limit sign down the road

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures and GSV is nonexistent, but there are a bunch of interesting signs along the Deerfield River east of the Hoosac Tunnel. A yellow weight restriction sign with a "Boston and Maine Railroad" signature and several old black-on-white distance signs.

[tckma]

I saw a few goodies in and near North Adams, MA today.

Massachusetts is a good place for sign spotting because there are no counties, and almost everything that's normally done by a county is done by the town or city.  This leads to 351 potential jurisdictional differences in signage within the state.  Old signs tend to stick around a lot longer too.

[Scott5114]

Hey, that weren't me. I knew the moment I saw it that it wasn't Clearview.

I know, but there's a tendency from a sizeable number of people on here to declare anything not Series EM as Clearview. I've even seen Georgia's mixed-case Series D declared to be "Clearview".

Not just a school, a slow school. (On one of the US 45 branches in west Tennessee...)

School, slow school. Alma mater of Bond, James Bond.

[CrystalWalrein]

It's not Clearview. It's Frutiger.

Thanks. I haven't seen Frutiger on a road sign before.

Not every sans-serif font that isn't FHWA Series is Clearview, guys.

Hey, that weren't me. I knew the moment I saw it that it wasn't Clearview.

Switzerland uses Frutiger (or a very close analogue) on its road signs.

[Michael]

I caught a glimpse of this Thruway sign with just a white NY state outline on Saturday night.  I had to double-check in Street View to make sure I saw what I thought I did.  I don't think I've ever seen a Thruway sign with just a white outline instead of having the NY state outline filled in with white.

[GenExpwy]

I caught a glimpse of this Thruway sign with just a white NY state outline on Saturday night.  I had to double-check in Street View to make sure I saw what I thought I did.  I don't think I've ever seen a Thruway sign with just a white outline instead of having the NY state outline filled in with white.

Also at the northbound approach of the intersection, and on reassurance assemblies along NY 233.

That state outline looks like someone tore it out by hand.

[Right on Red]

Found in Toronto (via Reddit):

[Alex]

Found in Toronto (via Reddit):

Graphics from the original Final Fantasy  I got a copy of that for the NES in 1990 and played the heck out of it that summer.

[PHLBOS]

http://goo.gl/maps/9RqdD

The arrow on this just looks way too long to me. Its almost as if they were trying to justify it with the legend. Thank god they didn't use the full spelling of Marlborough

Marlboro. ugh.

Isn't the arrow on that sign supposed to be the one pointing to the upper-right? Like the ones on overhead exit signs?

One of the peculiarities of MassDPW/MassHighway guide sign standards.  As the sign in question is inside the gore of an entrance ramp to a freeway, it's treated like an oversized "paddle" sign - hence the horizontal arrow as opposed to a slanted one.

Such has been standard practice in the Bay State for decades.

1972-vintage example (everything but the MA 49 shield is original)

[J N Winkler]

US 81 near Kremlin, Oklahoma:  "Historic Missouri Compromise Line - 1820 - 36° 30' N Latitude

I think this sign was installed ten years ago as part of the redevelopment of US 81 in Oklahoma into a Centennial Corridor dedicated to the Chisholm Trail.  The centennial in question was that of Oklahoma statehood (1907), not the trail itself, whose sesquicentennial is being observed this year.

[formulanone]

I found a couple of these blue "Truck Route" signs in Port Arthur, Texas:

[jakeroot]

Unique pair of "FREEWAY ENTRANCE" signs in New Westminster, BC. These types of signs are ubiquitous in Washington and California (amongst other states), but they're unheard of in BC (if not, the rest of Canada). AFAIK, these are the only freeway entrance signs anywhere in BC (they're not even utilised on the other entrance ramps for this same junction); even though they're in the BC traffic signs manual, I've never seen them placed before (and I can't tell if these signs are new or not -- the typeface says old, but the signs are in excellent shape). The black-on-white coloring is called for in the manual (PDF page 40), which differs from the white-on-green coloring in the US.

[Scott5114]

I wouldn't say the typeface particularly says old. It's a heavy, possibly condensed version of Futura. Not a font that shows up on signs a lot, but unless BC used to use a lot of Futura, it could easily be someone in the present day using the wrong typeface.

[busman_49]

I found a couple of these blue "Truck Route" signs in Port Arthur, Texas:

Now that's just awesome.

[jakeroot]

I wouldn't say the typeface particularly says old. It's a heavy, possibly condensed version of Futura. Not a font that shows up on signs a lot, but unless BC used to use a lot of Futura, it could easily be someone in the present day using the wrong typeface.

They've used a couple of different fonts in the past. It reminds me a lot of one particular font that was utilised heavily for several decades, but has mostly gone by the wayside (photo below).

But, it's definitely not the same font. Just similar. Perhaps you may be onto something with someone having used the wrong typeface. Which isn't crazy, because I've seen many different fonts on road signs in BC (Clearview, Highway Gothic, Helvetica, whatever the font is below, whatever the font is on this sign, etc). But never one that wasn't also seen somewhere else.

[Scott5114]

The font in the Abbotsford/Bellingham sign is a custom font most likely developed by BC themselves. In the US, several states developed custom typefaces in the period from about 1948 to 1970 and used those instead of the federal official fonts. This is because there were no computers at the time, so there was no way to easily distribute fonts in a way that was foolproof to replicate. Instead, the fonts were distributed as more or less a series of geometry problems which, when calculated, would result in the correct character. If you've ever looked at the SHS and seen how the standard icons are dimensioned out: same idea.

When computers and plotters started being used to create signs it became easier to simply load up a software file (like a TTF) and bang out the text with that. So the custom fonts fell by the wayside fairly quickly, although Michigan was still using theirs until very recently.

You don't see custom fonts on large freeway signs because button copy was purchased en masse from third-party vendors which supplied more or less standardized fonts. Nevertheless, there are differences; the Stimsonite '5' was shaped slightly different than the standard 5 we know and love, and whichever vendor Oklahoma used had slightly longer descenders on their lower-case 'y' and 'g'.

[SignGeek101]

Unique pair of "FREEWAY ENTRANCE" signs in New Westminster, BC. These types of signs are ubiquitous in Washington and California (amongst other states), but they're unheard of in BC (if not, the rest of Canada). AFAIK, these are the only freeway entrance signs anywhere in BC (they're not even utilised on the other entrance ramps for this same junction); even though they're in the BC traffic signs manual, I've never seen them placed before (and I can't tell if these signs are new or not -- the typeface says old, but the signs are in excellent shape). The black-on-white coloring is called for in the manual (PDF page 40), which differs from the white-on-green coloring in the US.

The signs aren't new. I would say it's just an error of some type (that or it somehow it wasn't a provincial install).

[hbelkins]

[cl94]

From the NYSDOT Region 9 files, I present this mixed-case gore sign. Been up for years. I-88 has a ton of mixed-case signs that should be all-caps, but this is the only gore sign I know of. Exit 13 in Oneonta is an example of bad mixed-case for direction banners. I actually think R9's stretch of I-88 has more mixed-case direction banners on BGSes than the proper all-caps variety.

[Scott5114]

Sure, capital Ps and upside-down, lowercase Ds are the same thing.

[J N Winkler]

From the NYSDOT Region 9 files, I present this mixed-case gore sign. Been up for years. I-88 has a ton of mixed-case signs that should be all-caps, but this is the only gore sign I know of. Exit 13 in Oneonta is an example of bad mixed-case for direction banners. I actually think R9's stretch of I-88 has more mixed-case direction banners on BGSes than the proper all-caps variety.

We used to have an example at the I-235/K-96 split for about 20 years, but I think that has now been replaced--KDOT let a major contract to replace guide signs on all Wichita-area freeways (except US 54) about two years ago, and a majority of the new signs have finally been installed.

FHWA actually sponsored a study in 1981 to determine whether it would be better to have cardinal direction words in mixed-case.  It showed that mixed-case cardinals could be read from 10% further away, but stopped short of recommending change to guide signing standards because the experimenters felt motorists' reported difficulties with cardinal directions (e.g., not being able to tell one block of all-uppercase letters from another) had more to do with uncertainty about the desired direction and less with visual acuity.  I suspect the raised initial letter (small caps treatment) was the eventual result, after a few more iterations of research.

[ekt8750]

Posting just to make the font purists' heads explode. 

2016 East End Bridge Trip Day 1 - 110 by H.B. Elkins, on Flickr

GAH!

[Bruce]

A sign on the HOV-only ramps at Lynnwood Transit Center near Seattle:


Lynnwood TC ramp sign by SounderBruce, on Flickr

Buses are allowed to use the ramp to bypass traffic in the HOV lane, while all other HOV traffic has to turn into the transit center's parking lot.

This photo was taken from the upper level of a double-decker bus during yesterday's snowy conditions. Commuting was a breeze.