Why don't European highway systems use shields a kin North American systems?

[firefly]

I don't know if I agree with you on that.  I have never seen a hexagonal German autobahn shield used anywhere outside of Germany.  in fact, I don't remember ever seeing one in an advertisement in Germany - as opposed to the US style of "66 Motel".

I've seen a perfect '61 spec interstate shield used on a billboard in Sweden.  I couldn't quite catch the details, but the route "number" was "USA", and the company appeared to be someone importing various American brands of consumer goods. 

The iconicity of number shields is not decided in advertising. Unlike others the German motorway number shield is well known among motorists in Europe and it is unique. And that makes it iconic.

[Duke87]

However, I will say that cardinal directions are superior to control cities for one reason: less sign clutter.  European signs tend to be jammed with way too much information.

I have a different reasoning for the same conclusion: cardinal directions are of a far greater assistance to navigation than control cities. Saying you are going towards X city tells you nothing about which direction you are headed in without context. You could be headed in completely the opposite direction of what you think if you are mistaken about which side of said city you are on. And even that requires that you have heard of the city in question and have a concept of where on the map it is.

Of course, control cities can absolutely be helpful and I wouldn't ditch them. I like the North American way of using both. The two together are often more useful than either individually, it allows you to mentally check one against the other for greater understanding of where you are and which way you need to go.

[firefly]

I have a different reasoning for the same conclusion: cardinal directions are of a far greater assistance to navigation than control cities. Saying you are going towards X city tells you nothing about which direction you are headed in without context. You could be headed in completely the opposite direction of what you think if you are mistaken about which side of said city you are on. And even that requires that you have heard of the city in question and have a concept of where on the map it is.

People want to go to places and not in a certain direction. Hence it is irrelevant which direction it really is.

On the other hand, navigating based on directional signs that reveal barely more than cardinal directions relies much more on context. If you don't know where you are in such an environment you're lost. A control destination based signage system, however, picks you up at every junction.

[agentsteel53]

People want to go to places and not in a certain direction. Hence it is irrelevant which direction it really is.

On the other hand, navigating based on directional signs that reveal barely more than cardinal directions relies much more on context. If you don't know where you are in such an environment you're lost. A control destination based signage system, however, picks you up at every junction.

I disagree.  let's say I am in Kansas, and want to head to Denver.  I come upon a junction and it is overcast, so I cannot tell west by the Sun.  I have been driving around random county roads all day; I cannot tell west by which direction I am currently going in, as I have no idea.

the guide sign at the T-junction says "Stockton" and "Hill City".

where do I go?

that was a real life example: K-18 northbound at US-24.  correct answer is probably "take I-70 you dumb fool" but that's not at all appealing.

[firefly]

the guide sign at the T-junction says "Stockton" and "Hill City".

where do I go?

A destination based system would give you more information. It would guide you towards a nearby road of higher rank. This would be the I-70 in this case.

A directional sign would rather look something like this:

[NE2]

the guide sign at the T-junction says "Stockton" and "Hill City".

where do I go?

A destination based system would give you more information. It would guide you towards a nearby road of higher rank. This would be the I-70 in this case.

A directional sign would rather look something like this:

His point is that he wants to follow US 24 rather than I-70, but can't remember which way is west. Your sign would get him to I-70, but says nothing about which direction on US 24 goes towards Denver.

[english si]

To the (continental) European, such a thought process is so alien that they really struggle to think that anyone would think that way - hence the wondering what the point is.

[agentsteel53]

To the (continental) European, such a thought process is so alien that they really struggle to think that anyone would think that way - hence the wondering what the point is.

continental Europeans never shunpike or take old alignments?

[J N Winkler]

A destination based system would give you more information. It would guide you towards a nearby road of higher rank. This would be the I-70 in this case.

A directional sign would rather look something like this:

This particular example is pretty obviously designed to RWB criteria.  Is it the norm in Germany to provide signing to a road of higher rank when that road is more than 70 miles away (the distance between the US 24/K-18 junction and I-70 at Colby)?  Also, why does the example sign show Kansas City as a destination for "Autobahn I-70" when a Kansas City-bound driver going to Colby to connect with I-70 would be driving almost 150 miles out of his way?

[english si]

continental Europeans never shunpike or take old alignments?

No, continental Europeans never give a flying fuck whether they are heading East, West, North or South - they just care about some often remote control destination (the number of times I've been navigating my parents through French countryside and came to junctions where Paris or some large regional town was signed, and then a load of villages that were only on my map as I had a high-zoom Michelin map - like 200 population. The number was often the same too, or missing from the sign. I had to navigate from "I am here, heading that way, we want to go left". Typically the large towns worked as they do in the UK, but it wasn't rare that I got the same one in both directions.) OK, France isn't Germany, which would be a bit more organised, but the French system must clearly work for the French and these roads probably see only a handful of British drivers each summer - why cater for them?

They don't tend to navigate by number or nearer major destination either - firefly and I have debated the British system elsewhere, which uses a combination of number and nearby destinations and 'regional destinations' which are somewhat like cardinal destinations. Firefly got lost because his map didn't show Heathrow Airport big enough, and approaching here, he wanted Bristol to be shown, as that is what he is used to - not (very major) airports and bridges on/near the M25 belt and cardinal directions of W and N to help you. If you want the West of the country, go clockwise, and for the North go anti-clockwise, but they aren't that big or bold. Dartford Crossing, Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport should be on the map in green highlight, and Heathrow and Gatwick are normally accompanied by (M4) and (M23) respectively - motorway numbers form quite a bit of navigation on the M25. The sign there is pretty awful, but Bristol is useless for most drivers there - who are British, not going on the M4 when they turn off the M25, and know where the airports roughly are, or have a map showing them clearly where they are.

And it's like a "you say pavement, I say tarmac, he says Pflaster; you say sidewalk, I say pavement, he says Bürgersteig; you say freeway, I say motorway, he says autobahn" - neither US or UK English or German (these are probably wrong - Google translate as school didn't teach me road features) is better - they are simply different. Let's call the whole thing off.

[firefly]

His point is that he wants to follow US 24 rather than I-70, but can't remember which way is west. Your sign would get him to I-70, but says nothing about which direction on US 24 goes towards Denver.

Heading west is no purpose neither is west a destination. And that's why it is not signed. The aim is to go to Denver. And the sign points there.
If he wants to stay on KS-24, then he can follow the route number.

This particular example is pretty obviously designed to RWB criteria.  Is it the norm in Germany to provide signing to a road of higher rank when that road is more than 70 miles away (the distance between the US 24/K-18 junction and I-70 at Colby)?  Also, why does the example sign show Kansas City as a destination for "Autobahn I-70" when a Kansas City-bound driver going to Colby to connect with I-70 would be driving almost 150 miles out of his way?

You misinterpret this sign. The motorway panel don't guide you to Colby but to junction 128 of the I-70 which is approx. 35 km away. This is still a long distance. But in absence of any relevant place in between a motorway or Interstate highway would certainly be signposted.

[J N Winkler]

You misinterpret this sign. The motorway panel doesn't guide you to Colby but to junction 128 of the I-70 which is approx. 35 km away. This is still a long distance. But in absence of any relevant place in between a motorway or Interstate highway would certainly be signposted.

Thank you for the clarification.

I would make a few observations:

The RWB-style sign attempts to do work which in the US would ordinarily be left to road maps.  This sign could be posted on any side road off US 24 on either side of Hill City (US 283 intersection), and tells the driver the way to the nearest Interstate.  The signs that would actually be used would tell the driver, at most, the number of the intersecting route, the directions of travel on that route which correspond to one or more of the four cardinal directions, and (in Kansas, where special state standards apply) the next county seat or large town.  The direction to the nearest Interstate would not normally be given unless it were the straight-ahead destination on one route or would become the straight-ahead destination if one turned at an intersection of state highways.  (Kansas allows signposting of major routes but assigns them priority lower than county seats and towns with populations greater than 1000.)

Route and cardinal direction information would appear on one assembly, while control point information would appear on a separate assembly.  The information that is presented is therefore not only more parsimonious, but also broken into separate morsels.

In the US design criteria for message load are quite strict, because the basic principle used since the early 1940's has required that drivers of ordinary intelligence and visual acuity be able to read the entirety of every sign twice in the time that it is visible to traffic.  On D-series signs (conventional-road direction signs), this means that destinations are limited to three, exceptionally four, per sign, as opposed to an upper limit of six in Britain and similarly high limits in other European countries.  The RWB-style sign has not just four city destinations (Colby, Beloit, Denver, Kansas City), but also two routes (24, 70), so it would not be accepted as ordinary provision under current MUTCD design criteria.  It would need to be specially justified.

Finally, the use of Denver and Kansas City on the blue I-70 patch requires drivers to understand that each is being offered as a major city in one direction on I-70, and that the sign is not necessarily suggesting I-70 is part of the best route either to Denver or to Kansas City from the sign's location.  In fact, using I-70 for Denver and Kansas City from points on the US 24 corridor in western Kansas would involve measurable amounts of out-of-the-way travel.  From Hill City, using I-70 adds 35 miles to a journey to Denver and 5 miles to a journey to Kansas City.  (I-70 is actually the more logical route for Kansas City because US 24 passes through several small cities such as Manhattan and Topeka without full access control, so travel time is shorter overall on I-70.)  This is a distinction German drivers would be used to and would readily understand, but US drivers would not unless they received training in RWB design criteria or full immersion in an area where the RWB approach is used.

[cpzilliacus]

continental Europeans never shunpike or take old alignments?

No, continental Europeans never give a flying fuck whether they are heading East, West, North or South - they just care about some often remote control destination (the number of times I've been navigating my parents through French countryside and came to junctions where Paris or some large regional town was signed, and then a load of villages that were only on my map as I had a high-zoom Michelin map - like 200 population.

Si, I agree regarding compass directions.  Only rarely have I seen a direction posted in the Nordic countries, with one set of exceptions.  For some reason, Finland nearly always posts directions (eastbound/westbound) on the Helsingfors/Helsinki orbital highways (Ring I (Highway 101) and Ring III (Highway 50/E18).

[agentsteel53]

come to think of it, if I could do 240km/h on "the I-70 Autobahn", I'd go 35km out of my way to do so! 

maybe the Germans do have it right...

[agentsteel53]

Heading west is no purpose neither is west a destination.

[NE2]

His point is that he wants to follow US 24 rather than I-70, but can't remember which way is west. Your sign would get him to I-70, but says nothing about which direction on US 24 goes towards Denver.

Heading west is no purpose neither is west a destination. And that's why it is not signed. The aim is to go to Denver. And the sign points there.
If he wants to stay on KS-24, then he can follow the route number.

He doesn't want to *stay on* *US* 24; he's on a road that intersects US 24 and wants to know which way is west.

[agentsteel53]

He doesn't want to *stay on* *US* 24; he's on a road that intersects US 24 and wants to know which way is west.

I want to *get on* US 24.

and for those that say 'get a compass' - imagine if it were a junction with a physically north-south road which goes logically east-west.  a lot of routes do this in the Midwest, to jog along section lines.

unless you're a land surveyor from ~100 years ago, it's a pretty arbitrary system - you cannot tell readily whether logical west is physical north, or physical south.

[Brandon]

His point is that he wants to follow US 24 rather than I-70, but can't remember which way is west. Your sign would get him to I-70, but says nothing about which direction on US 24 goes towards Denver.

Heading west is no purpose neither is west a destination. And that's why it is not signed. The aim is to go to Denver. And the sign points there.
If he wants to stay on KS [US - sic] -24, then he can follow the route number.

"West" is a direction, and the direction he wants to go.  It serves a major purpose.  You (as in Europeans) often seem to forget that west of the Mississippi River, motorway/autobahn-type routes are much further and fewer in between.  In many cases when one is tens, even hundreds of miles from an interstate, one two-lane is just as good as another two-lane.  They're parallel, and to get to your destination, you need to head a certain direction.

At the point where you are, US-24 and US-283, I-70 is 26 miles to the south, about a half-hour away.  Most US (and Canadian for that matter) drivers will go tangential until they are closer to the interstate instead of heading directly for the interstate first, especially in the West where interstates are farther and fewer in between.  They worry less about which destination than which direction they are going.  The direction will get them to their eventual destination which may be a couple thousand miles away.

[deathtopumpkins]

This is a fascinating discussion, but there's one thing I really want to point out - on many US roads there are SO MANY destinations that can be accessed from that road that signing the destination rather than the direction is not really possible.

For example, say I'm getting on I-95 in Westchester County, NY (just outside NYC). If I got on northbound, I could be heading to Portland or Portsmouth or Boston or Providence or New London or New Haven, all by staying on I-95, and all within 6 hours of driving. Other destinations of note that I could be headed for include Cape Cod, Fall River, or New Bedford (via I-195), Plymouth (via US 44), Hartford or Springfield (via I-91), Worcester (via I-395), or any of dozens of other sizable cities in New England. But to get to ALL of these places I know that when I get on I-95 I need to head north. If the signage lacked the direction north, I would instead need to know that I need to head toward New Haven, then pick a new destination there. But if I'm a tourist who is completely unfamiliar with relatively minor Connecticut cities (like New Haven), headed from a NYC airport up to Boston, I will know that Boston is north[east] of New York, but probably not where New Haven is or where to go from there.

In short, there are too many intermediate destinations for you to follow your destination the whole way even for day trip distances. You need to know intermediate destinations. Whereas with cardinal directions you can follow that the whole way.

[english si]

This is a fascinating discussion, but there's one thing I really want to point out - on many US roads there are SO MANY destinations that can be accessed from that road that signing the destination rather than the direction is not really possible.
<snip example>
In short, there are too many intermediate destinations for you to follow your destination the whole way even for day trip distances. You need to know intermediate destinations. Whereas with cardinal directions you can follow that the whole way.

Ah, but the continental Europeans (and Irish, and somewhat the Scots) sign destinations that are a long way away. The British halfway house of having things like this where you have some small (though primary destinations, which stand out on better maps) places nearby and most of the country signed as "The SOUTH", rather than fighting over which big city to sign spooks continentals.

As a bonus, Firefly says on page 20 "The example you came up with is great. It got it all in once the flaws of the British road signage. As already mentioned it is mainly based on road numbers. And that's the reason why this sign is utter crap." Therein lies the rub - we think differently - imposing some US-style system of navigation on Germany, or English & Welsh (Scotland and NI are different) or vice versa (German in the UK, UK on the USA, etc, etc) is silliness. It's like forcing lefties to write with their right hand.

[cpzilliacus]

Most European countries use a colour code to distinguish different types of roads. That makes the use of flamboyant shields dispensable.

Finland has a nice assortment of colors (this could almost go in the "Sine Salad" thread):

International arterial highway, or "E" route (always multiplexed with a national highway route in Finland, example below): 


National highways:


Highway 7/E18 (most of E18 is being upgraded to motorway standard (much of it already is), and when that happens, the blue background becomes green):


Regional highway:


Local (secondary) highway:


"Other" local (secondary) highway:

[deathtopumpkins]

This is a fascinating discussion, but there's one thing I really want to point out - on many US roads there are SO MANY destinations that can be accessed from that road that signing the destination rather than the direction is not really possible.
<snip example>
In short, there are too many intermediate destinations for you to follow your destination the whole way even for day trip distances. You need to know intermediate destinations. Whereas with cardinal directions you can follow that the whole way.

Ah, but the continental Europeans (and Irish, and somewhat the Scots) sign destinations that are a long way away. The British halfway house of having things like this where you have some small (though primary destinations, which stand out on better maps) places nearby and most of the country signed as "The SOUTH", rather than fighting over which big city to sign spooks continentals.

Which helps my point. If you're going to consistently use "The SOUTH", "The EAST", etc. as a destination, why not just include the cardinal directions all the time.

I feel like it would be easier to have signs say "M6 SOUTH" rather than just list "the South" as if it were a destination.

[english si]

Which helps my point. If you're going to consistently use "The SOUTH", "The EAST", etc. as a destination, why not just include the cardinal directions all the time.

1)Because we neither have the road geography that provides each road with a simple pair of opposite cardinal directions - a few more could be done N-E or something - but most can't - trust me.
2)Because that's not how we work - numbers and destinations - the Regional Destinations are mostly for the Trunk road network - there's times where the cardinal direction (or The MIDLANDS, or the four secondary compass point - though London replaces the south east, or NORTH WALES, MID WALES and SOUTH WALES, or SCOTLAND) work better than giving a few cities, but not every time - or we'd use them more often.
3)We don't long distance traffic not on the long-distance network.
4)We want The WEST or The NORTH, or whatever on a beltway, as a destination, when it's not the direction.
5)We have nowhere to put it on signs - we fairly frequently have some direction indicator other than destination, but proper directions don't really fit.
6)It'll look ugly without a radical overhaul of the UK sign system.

I feel like it would be easier to have signs say "M6 SOUTH" rather than just list "the South" as if it were a destination.

Given that there's nowhere to put a direction, listing it as a destination works well. And it is a destination - more than just a direction - signs to The SOUTH dry up when you are there.

As I've alluded to, not everything that works in America works everywhere else. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

[NE2]

4)We want The WEST or The NORTH, or whatever on a beltway, as a destination, when it's not the direction.

[english si]

Err, that picture says nothing - NORTH 695 TO NORTH 95 - not what I was talking about with different directions.

http://goo.gl/maps/eyz4i <- this is more the kind of thing I was thinking about - OK, this is an E-W road, forming the northern section of the mostly unbuilt Belfast Ring Road, but The NORTH, The SOUTH and The WEST are on the sign in that direction. And having "M3 (W): (A12, M1 (W), A1(S)), (M2 (N)), Docks" looks silly. We could overhaul our entire signage system to do it like the USA "M3 WEST to M1 SOUTH WEST, M2 NORTH", but that is a waste of time and a lot of money to make some minor niggle about us using compass points as destinations rather just than as directions.

Also would piss off the European drivers (that are way way more common than American drivers), who want destinations as numbers are meaningless to them (which is also rather the case there in Northern Ireland anyway) - they find it bad enough that on this sign "Dublin" becomes a more vague "The SOUTH" (possibly to include Newcastle and Downpatrick, certainly to include Newry - and Cork, etc), that "Carrickfergus, Londonderry, Coleraine, Larne" is shortened to "The NORTH", and that a vague "The WEST" is given instead of one of many destinations down the M1 past Craigavon.

As I've said - more than one way to skin a cat. The American way works, the German way works, our hybrid between the two works - as it ain't broke, don't fix it.