Most common sign error per state

[Alps]

What's the most common type of sign error you seem to run into? Here are a few I've come up with.
RI: Misuse of shield - directions, arrows, other text included erroneously, or sometimes omitting "R.I." from the state shield.
CT: MA shields for CT routes
NY: Promotion of random highways to US, or the wild inconsistency in how each region signs street names
NJ: Misspellings of street and town names


Go ahead, add to the list, and have fun with it! There's no right or wrong answer.

[Max Rockatansky]

California has a ton of issues flat out not signing state routes.  Caltrans Districts vary wildly in signage quality and placement.  Signed County Routes tend to exist randomly or not at all in some counties like Tulare. 

[US 89]

What's the most common type of sign error you seem to run into? Here are a few I've come up with.
RI: Misuse of shield - directions, arrows, other text included erroneously, or sometimes omitting "R.I." from the state shield.
CT: MA shields for CT routes
NY: Promotion of random highways to US, or the wild inconsistency in how each region signs street names
NJ: Misspellings of street and town names


Go ahead, add to the list, and have fun with it! There's no right or wrong answer.

Would not posting concurrent roads count? Arkansas has a problem with that.

That is one of my biggest problem with Utah road signs in general. Some of the concurrencies have recently been signed (15/6 and 15/50) but several remain unsigned, such as the I-70/US 50 and the I-80/US 189 concurrencies. UT also occasionally signs US routes with the SR beehive shield, or less commonly signs SRs with US Highway shields.

But the worst thing about UT signage, IMO, is the tremendous inconsistency in SR beehive shield design. The actual design has changed a few times in the past ten years or so. Combine that with various contractor errors and you get at least ten different varieties of beehive shields. In fact, there is a whole thread calledAdventures in Utah Signage, much of which is dedicated to this topic.

[NE2]

RI: not knowing where the fuck their routes even go.

[jakeroot]

WA: bubble shields (a fad that appears to have passed, luckily). For about a decade or longer, WSDOT seemed to only use bubble shields.

[Eth]

GA: Improperly signing bannered (usually state) routes as mainlines (or, occasionally, the reverse).

Just on I-75 in Cobb County alone, I believe you can find GA 120 Alt signed as regular GA 120, either 120 or 120 Alt (forget which) signed as its former designation of 120 Loop, GA 5 Spur signed as regular GA 5, and regular GA 5 signed as 5 Spur.

[PHLBOS]

NY: Promotion of random highways to US

MA is guilty of doing the opposite; demoting US routes to state routes.

[hbelkins]

Kentucky: Improper signing of concurrencies.

[jeffandnicole]

Is it a sign error when they don't replace a sign that's gone missing! NJ seems to excel in that as well.

[J N Winkler]

While signing is generally clean in Kansas, KDOT and the KTA have a few recurring errors:

*  (Demountable copy era only) Mismatched letter sizes on certain large panel signs (I suspect these are knockdown repairs)

*  Helvetica digits on knockdown replacements for independent-mount Interstate route markers

*  20-point sunflower (correct design has 16 points) on KTA infrastructure

*  Helvetica lettering on passing lane signs

*  Sunflowers with hooked petals pointing counterclockwise instead of clockwise

*  Bubble three-digit US independent-mount markers

*  Too-tall Series C for three-digit US routes where one of the digits is 1 (often in combination with the previously listed error)

*  Fluorescent yellow instead of plain yellow for the sunflower (sounds like a minor difference, but is glaringly obvious when the two are mixed in "sign salad" assemblies)

*  (Older KDOT TE series standard plan sheets for inclusion with signing plans only) Use of "Burrough" as an example destination along with "Town," "City," "Village," etc.

Edit:  Field examples have been added.

[Mr. Matté]

Is it a sign error when they don't replace a sign that's gone missing! NJ seems to excel in that as well.

Or never put one in in the first place i.e. missing one way/wrong way signs per this story and my personal observation of someone turning onto the wrong side of US 130 here (which still hasn't been fixed even though I've written to my Assemblyman who is now the chair of the transportation committee).

[vdeane]

NY: Promotion of random highways to US

MA is guilty of doing the opposite; demoting US routes to state routes.

NY is famous for it.  It's right up there with state routes signed as US routes.

[Scott5114]

Oklahoma: Is Oklahoma.

Wait, I'll try that again.

Oklahoma: Fails to apply consistent interline spacing or margins, often resulting in mis-centered text, fails to make sizes and font series consistent from panel to panel.

*  20-point sunflower (correct design has 16 points) on KTA infrastructure

Curious to see what this looks like and how an error like that even happens.

[slorydn1]

Not so much an error per se, but NC is famous for not adding/removing signage after a route change in a timely manner. They do  get around to it eventually, but not soon enough to keep confusion from happening.
There were US-17 signs all the way down Broad St in New Bern for several years after the new Neuse River Bridge replaced the draw bridge back in 1999, for example.

[J N Winkler]

*  20-point sunflower (correct design has 16 points) on KTA infrastructure

Curious to see what this looks like and how an error like that even happens.

I've edited my post to supply StreetView examples for some of the typical errors, including this one.  Richie Kennedy also has a high-resolution photo that I believe he took during the 2013 Wichita road meet.  As for how it happens, my understanding is that KTA uses FlexiSign (which, unlike SignCAD and GuidSIGN, is not dedicated to traffic signs specifically) for in-house signing work, and I suspect they copy and paste the sawblade element of the design from the Turnpike route marker, which does have 20 points (though I fake it with 16 when I create sign mockups).  Signing work done on the Turnpike under contract is generally done to plans HNTB (KTA's engineering consultant) develops using SignCAD, which has the correct 16-point sawblade available.

[index]

NY: Promotion of random highways to US, or the wild inconsistency in how each region signs street names

NC has that too. (Not the stuff with the US routes) The NCSMUTCD (NC supplementary MUTCD) leaves all street name signs up to the municipality or county in which they are in. It also specifically states they are not the responsibility of NCDOT. As a result, street name signs are often signed with the wrong shade of green, arrangement, font, etc. Sometimes even residential developments sign them, my development has them signed in the Impact font in a shade of lime green...

Maybe NYS has this too? I can't check right now if they have a supplementary MUTCD or other thing that says that street name signs are not the responsibility of NYSDOT.

DC (DDOT): They never sign US routes, hardly any routes at that. A lot of Interstate signage there is horrible. One example I found on GSV was Helvetica text on an improperly sized interstate shield, (usually bubble) all on a small object marker sized sign with the wrong shade of green.

[SectorZ]

MA: Poor signage in cities for state routes, demotion of US routes to state routes (and I-190 to US 190 in Leominster), piss-poor thought in much of the little green signs especially in cities

NH: (Only starting in very recent times) getting US and state routes confused (NH 3 in Manchester, US 3A in Hudson), and the weird quirk of the hyphen/no hyphen variability in all suffixed routes

[roadman65]

In Florida is mileage signs consistency.  For example the interstates use usually two point city mileage signs post interchange, except I-75 (the part that opened in 1885 from Tampa to Naples) which uses typically 3 per sign.  Its usually the city or route of the next exit followed by the main control city.  However, when a new interchange is added they forget to update the signs, hence on I-95 in Daytona Beach when the LPGA Blvd. interchange was added.  The sign north of US 92 would use Ormond Beach, as previously the next exit was at SR 40 in Ormond, followed by Jacksonville.  Instead of changing it to include LGPGA Blvd. it got left and copied over to still use both Ormond and Jax.

I-4 has plenty of them, mainly in Lakeland using SR 559 post SR 33 going EB when now SR 570 is the next exit.  Plus when SR 570 opened, no mileage sign was ever installed post interchange at the SR 570 trumpet with I-4 either.

Also in Lakeland west of Exit 31 (Kathleen Road) the sign that was there for years denoting County Line Road as 5 miles as that was the first westbound exit until FL 570 and the WB Exit 28 ramps were added, the sign was not only not updated, but last year when Plant City was added to it giving it a third control city it was never noticed by the engineer who thought of adding Plant City to the mix that the first exit criteria is not anymore met as well.

[Scott5114]

[...]I suspect they copy and paste the sawblade element of the design from the Turnpike route marker, which does have 20 points (though I fake it with 16 when I create sign mockups).

That makes a lot of sense. I would have expected the KTA shield and the K-shield to have the same sunflower too, and probably wouldn't have even thought about counting the points to see if they differed...but I also spend much less time looking at Kansas sign sheets than you.

Then again, the 16/20-point difference is small potatoes compared to the total loss that is the meat cleaver, of which four varieties were extant within the first year of being posted, so...

Older KTA signage, like Wyoming consistently does, also made the error of using the Type D instead of Type A arrow. It seems like newer installs have corrected this practice, though.

[CtrlAltDel]

Oklahoma: Is Oklahoma.

Or rather:

Oklahoma: Is 0^k|a_ho_M^a.

[corco]

Idaho: Inconsistent signing on urban freeways, particularly in exit only situations. Also there has been a very slow proliferation of incorrect inverted state highway shields in random locations in the last decade.

[J N Winkler]

That makes a lot of sense. I would have expected the KTA shield and the K-shield to have the same sunflower too, and probably wouldn't have even thought about counting the points to see if they differed...but I also spend much less time looking at Kansas sign sheets than you.

As it happens, I didn't pick up on the difference through studying signing sheets--I was taking out-of-the-car high-resolution photos long before plans became available online through KDOT.  And actually the SignCAD version of the Turnpike marker (or whatever it is that HNTB is using to fake it for Turnpike work) has 16 points.  From photos I had known for a long time that the Turnpike marker (or at least one version of it--see below) has 20 points, but it was Richie who spotted the 20 points on the K-96 guide sign shield.  This was a major find.

I've been roaming the Turnpike in StreetView and have reached the tentative conclusion that there are two separate versions of the Turnpike marker:  a 16-point marker that is used in contract work (e.g., the northbound pull-through sign at the Emporia interchange, which was installed under contract about ten years ago) and a 20-point marker that is used for in-house work.  Moreover, it appears that on the 16-point markers (both Turnpike and state route) the top petal points straight out, while on the 20-point markers (again, both Turnpike and state route) it hooks clockwise.

As regards the Kansas state route marker, the Turnpike 20-point version appears to exist in both two- and three-digit widths.  Besides K-96, K-177 (Cassoday) and K-10 (Lecompton/Lawrence) have 20-pointers.

Older KTA signage, like Wyoming consistently does, also made the error of using the Type D instead of Type A arrow. It seems like newer installs have corrected this practice, though.

Type A arrow is progress.  I don't think the MUTCD technically requires that they do it, but I really wish KTA would use 30 in rather than 24 in exit tabs and use a border thinner than the main sign border if they choose not to omit the bottom border and square out the appropriate corners of both tab and main sign panel.  Their "Next Exit X Miles" strip panels also have insufficient vertical space padding, and could benefit from the mileage value being at a taller size.

[jp the roadgeek]

CT: MA shields for CT routes

I've seen about 10 variations of the CT state route shield.  You have the correct white shield with the black outline, the MA shield with the thin black outline, and the ones on the BGS's either white with no outline or button copy with a green background.  There's quite a few in my town that are MA bases with BOLD numbers.  Then you have the CONN 138 shield left, and maybe a couple of state outline early 70's style shields in Fairfield County.  CT's also has a problem of demoting US routes to state routes.  The CT 6 signs along the I-84 duplex in Farmington/West Hartford, the new CT 202 exit sign in Torrington, and I'd imagine there has to be a few CT 1 shields somewhere.

[route56]

Richie Kennedy also has a high-resolution photo [of a guide sign with a 20-point K-96 shield -RPK] that I believe he took during the 2013 Wichita road meet.

Actually, it was June of 2012


43963 by Richie Kennedy, on Flickr

As for how it happens, my understanding is that KTA uses FlexiSign (which, unlike SignCAD and GuidSIGN, is not dedicated to traffic signs specifically) for in-house signing work, and I suspect they copy and paste the sawblade element of the design from the Turnpike route marker, which does have 20 points (though I fake it with 16 when I create sign mockups).  Signing work done on the Turnpike under contract is generally done to plans HNTB (KTA's engineering consultant) develops using SignCAD, which has the correct 16-point sawblade available.

I think this is the first time I've heard someone other than Chris "Sawblade5" Knight refer to the Kansas state highway marker in this manner 

[Takumi]

Virginia's is getting US, state primary, and state secondary signs confused.