Milemarkers...what to do with them?

[cjk374]

After reading the posts about milemarkers (I may use the term "milepost" sometimes because I work on a railroad), I think this topic should have its own thread.  I think Louisiana gets it right by 1) posting them on all state-maintained routes, 2) not resetting them at parish or town limits, and 3) tries to keep them on these roads by replacing the missing ones every few years.     However, when it comes to putting them on US 80, they never seem to put the new ones back in the same place.      I think if they would use the bigger signposts instead of the smaller ones (1.18 lb/ft vs 2.2 lb/ft), the mileposts would stand a better chance of staying put.

[corco]

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.

[Ian]

Nothing complicated- milemarkers are posted every mile on every route

Same thing for New Jersey. You can find mile markers on mostly every route, including county routes.

[cjk374]

^^^County routes also??      That's very interesting.  Does the state or counties maintain those?

[froggie]

To oversimplify, the 5xx county routes in New Jersey are state-aid type routes.

[huskeroadgeek]

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.

Pretty much the same as Nebraska does too. The only difference is that I think the milemarkers on interstates are somewhat larger in size than the ones on other highways.

[corco]

Nebraska's also aren't quite the standard milemarkers

On most roads and non Douglas/Lancaster/Sarpy/maybe a couple other eastern county interstates, you have this type of milemarker (although, yeah, a bit larger on freeways)


Although in Lincoln/Omaha you get these every .1 miles, which is even better


Whereas Washington's look like this (usually independently mounted though)


I'd say if Nebraska went to the MILE milepost which is just a bit more legible from a distance and then did what they do in Lincoln/Omaha, they'd be perfect- alternatively if Washington adopted those 1/10 milemarkers with shield in urban areas, they'd be perfect too.


Which....maybe that's Colorado!
(ignore the error)


Also, I think I'm wrong on the mileposts being freeway sized off-freeway in Washington.

[agentsteel53]

.1 mile granularity seems to be a bit overkill.  I think if they did .5, they could use bigger, more legible mileposts and still save metal.

[cjk374]

Nebraska's also aren't quite the standard milemarkers

On most roads and non Douglas/Lancaster/Sarpy/maybe a couple other eastern county interstates, you have this type of milemarker (although, yeah, a bit larger on freeways)

This is almost what they looked like in Louisiana when I was a kid (late 70s-early 80s)!    

[Scott5114]

Most states that use fractional mileposts place them every .2 miles per the MUTCD.

Kansas uses mileposts similar to the non-Interstate Nebraska one shown above on their non-interstate routes.

[corco]

Most states that use fractional mileposts place them every .2 miles per the MUTCD.

Is it .2? That sounds right for Nebraska, now that I think about it.

Kansas uses mileposts similar to the non-Interstate Nebraska one shown above on their non-interstate routes.

As does Wyoming- they're also still on I-25 north of Casper for some reason

[Michael in Philly]

To oversimplify, the 5xx county routes in New Jersey are state-aid type routes.

When I was a kid in New Jersey developing an obsession with maps (in the early '70s), the 500 series were a subset of county roads identified in the legend on some maps as "state secondary roads."  They were maintained by the counties (I believe) but numbered according to a statewide system, to supplement the state highways.  A 500-series road can be quite long, by New Jersey standards anyway, because it won't change its number at county lines.  Other county roads, in most of the state, were not numbered in those days.  The usual marker for a secondary road was a white rectangle, black border and number, name of the county above the number and the word "county" below it.

Starting, very approximately, 1980, all county roads are posted (although the counties closest to New York did it relatively late and relatively inconsistently - I don't navigate by them because you can't rely on them being marked), with numbers in the 600s (700s as well in the largest counties) - except Bergen and Monmouth counties, which numbered their county roads even before the 500 series existed and use low numbers.  And the blue-pentagon marker is standard for all of these now, 500-series and otherwise.  Incidentally, no state route can have a number above 499, and 500-series numbers (generally) won't be duplicated in different parts of the state, so the state and state-secondary series compliment each other in that way too.  A 600- or 700-series number can show up in multiple places in different counties.  Although even these tend to keep the same number when they cross county lines.  But they won't run for 50 or 60 miles, which is not at all unusual for the 500 series.

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure, and I can conceive of a chunk of this post being moved....

[Michael in Philly]

.1 mile granularity seems to be a bit overkill.  I think if they did .5, they could use bigger, more legible mileposts and still save metal.

It would be even worse if it was tenths of a kilometer.  :-)

[Michael in Philly]

Most states that use fractional mileposts place them every .2 miles per the MUTCD.

Kansas uses mileposts similar to the non-Interstate Nebraska one shown above on their non-interstate routes.

Really?  I can't think of many places in the Northeast I've seen them at 0.2 mile intervals.  It's usually every tenth, sometimes every half.  And when did we start doing fractions anyway?  When I was growing up - [lapses into reminiscence mode again] - they were usually every mile; every half in Delaware (I figured because it was so small....) and tenths on the New Jersey Turnpike.

[tdindy88]

Indiana generally has milemarkers for every mile on interstates while it depends on state and federal highways. Those milemarkers are small white on blue signs that sometimes only appear on bridges and in this case, only as a direct point of reference for that bridge. Still, the white on blue milemarkers are sometimes there just to be a milemarker, but it varies on the highway. In Indianapolis, Northwest Indiana, Fort Wayne, Evansville, and Kokomo you do see the .2 mile white on blue milemarker signs and in some places (newly rebuilt highways) there are .1 milemarkers appearing.

[rawmustard]

Indiana generally has milemarkers for every mile on interstates while it depends on state and federal highways. Those milemarkers are small white on blue signs that sometimes only appear on bridges and in this case, only as a direct point of reference for that bridge. Still, the white on blue milemarkers are sometimes there just to be a milemarker, but it varies on the highway. In Indianapolis, Northwest Indiana, Fort Wayne, Evansville, and Kokomo you do see the .2 mile white on blue milemarker signs and in some places (newly rebuilt highways) there are .1 milemarkers appearing.

The only caveat with most of these markers is that they aren't updated should a state road either be rerouted or truncated. For the most part, the markers are there to correspond with INDOT's roadway referencing manual, which can be downloaded from INDOT's "Manuals" page under the "Roadway Referencing System" header.

[codyg1985]

Alabama does the same thing as Washington State and Louisiana with their mile markers. They have MILE on the top and then the mile number below it. Alabama doesn't have .2 or .5 mile posts as far as I know. 

Tennessee has mile markers on non-interstate routes that reset at the county line. The mile marker will have the mile on it and then the state route number on the bottom (for US highways, the secret state route number is used).

[mightyace]

^^^

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

[hbelkins]

Check this out for a representative sample of an interesting variety of mile marker along I-65 south of Nashville.

http://www.millenniumhwy.net/2010_Nashville/Pages/233.html

[mightyace]

^^^

I have pictures of those on the shoulder signs as well, possibly even the same one.  I just haven't uploaded them to Flickr yet.

They seem unusual as I don't recall seeing the on the shoulder ones anywhere else.  Everywhere else I've seen them, they're only on the center Jersey barrier or in the median.

[froggie]

Really?  I can't think of many places in the Northeast I've seen them at 0.2 mile intervals.

Newly-resigned sections of Interstate in Vermont now have them.

New Hampshire has been religious about using 0.2 milemarkers, even on non-Interstates (US 2, US 302, and NH 9 all have them).

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

[codyg1985]

Missouri has 0.2 mile markers on all interstates and some US and state-route freeways. They are signed on the shoulder.

[LeftyJR]

PennDOT has been placing them at 0.2 intervals along I-80, I'd say it about 3/4 complete at this point.  The signs for the 0.2 markers seem to big to me though.

[corco]

I know the trend is to use those .2 markers in more urban areas, but why is that? I presume the purpose for those is that if there's an incident it will be easier to locate the problem, but it seems to me that an urban area is going to have other telling details about location whereas if one is broken down I-80 in the middle of Wyoming and they weren't aware of what milepost they were near, it could really be a challenge to identify one's location. (Couple that with the fact that if it's wintertime and windy, you'd have to be really, really stupid to get out of your car to find a milepost)

[Michael]

Here's a mile marker on the NY 5 Camillus Bypass near Syracuse:
http://www.alpsroads.net/roads/ny/ny_5/wmile.jpg I don't do hotlinking. Copy and paste this link.
It's 4.6 miles from the beginning of the freeway.  Signs like this are also on NY 695 and I-690.  They were installed around 2000 or 2001 if I remember correctly.  I would guess the sign is as wide as a reassurance marker, and about twice as high.  The reference marker above the sign is 8 by 10 inches.

EDIT: Thanks, Alps.  I wondered why it only worked once.