(Wichita, Kansas) Edgemoor Ave. not signed on westbound Kellogg

[J N Winkler]

In this morning's Eagle:

http://www.kansas.com/2012/06/10/2368839/on-westbound-kellogg-edgemoor.html

In brief, the direct route to Edgemoor Ave. from westbound Kellogg means taking an exit which is at present signed only for Armour St., Towne East Dr., and Woodlawn Ave. (not Edgemoor).  KDOT says, correctly as far as it goes, that Edgemoor Ave. can't be added to the advance guide signs for this exit because they would then have too many destinations, and a supplemental guide sign is inappropriate for Edgemoor Ave. because it is a street rather than a traffic generator.

What the article does not really say (but is evident from the accompanying photo, which shows a three-sign gantry half a mile upstream of the exit) is that "Towne East Dr." on the half-mile advance guide sign is in effect backdoor supplemental signing or publicly subsidized advertising (take your pick) for Towne East Mall, which would not otherwise qualify for supplemental signing in Kansas.  Towne East Dr. is actually a renamed length of Armour St. that goes past Towne East Mall on the west.  Google Maps still shows it as Armour St., so the existing signing has poor map relatability.

The text of the article says that destinations on advance guide signs are limited to two in most cases, except on three-sign gantries, where they are limited to just one.  It does not explain how it is acceptable to have a surfeit of one (general limit) or two (three-sign-gantry limit) for the half-mile advance guide sign.

The article also does not specify who was responsible for the existing signing.  It was installed under the Rock Road interchange construction contract, which had a K/KA project number (thus indicating it was nominally under KDOT jurisdiction) but was designed by a consultant working for the City of Wichita, which also handled advertising, award, and (I believe) construction supervision.

[kphoger]

Edgemoor is my exit.  I live a block from it.  Frankly, I don't find the Woodlawn/Armour exit to be all that useful for getting to Edgemoor, anyway.  It's faster to go past it to the Oliver exit, then use the protected turnaround and back-track to Edgemoor.
http://goo.gl/maps/1xwf
Now, that's because I live south of Kellogg; the advantage of avoiding stoplights by exiting at Oliver would be diminished if I lived north of Kellogg, but it still might end up quicker than exiting at Armour.

[route56]

didn't we discuss the signing on East Kellogg a while back

Worth noting, the Wichita-designed signage only uses the street name, not the suffix... e.g. "Rock" instead of "Rock Road." Isn't there something in the MUTCD about that?

[kphoger]

Some streets do indeed include the suffix on overhead exit signs, but it's spotty.  I can never remember which ones include it off-hand, and it may very well differ from highway to highway.

[J N Winkler]

Worth noting, the Wichita-designed signage only uses the street name, not the suffix... e.g. "Rock" instead of "Rock Road." Isn't there something in the MUTCD about that?

I don't recall any language in the MUTCD that actually forbids omission of a street type designator, though there is a section (I think somewhere in Chapter 1) which steers practitioners away from inappropriate abbrevations.

In any case, it is not all the City of Wichita's doing.  KDOT omitted "Ave" when it retrofitted option lanes at the I-135/US 54 turban (so the relevant signs say just "Kellogg" and not "Kellogg Ave").  The signs for the Rock Road exit on K-96 (which I know was done by either the City of Wichita or Sedgwick County, probably the former) do say "Rock Road" in full.  Tyler/Maize was a City of Wichita job, done just before Kellogg/Rock, and the signs do say "Tyler Rd" and "Maize Rd" respectively.

This fairly old example (I-135/Pawnee Ave.) is totally on KDOT.

My best guess is that the engineers involved (regardless of who they work for) try speaking variants of the street names with and without street type designators and choose the ones which scan better.

[Takumi]

Colonial Heights Public Works omitted street name designations on occasion with their 1990s street blade changeout. The most notorious was Duke of Gloucester St, which never had the "St" designation on any of its blades during that time. The other instances of this were simply because the sign were made too short. (There were also many, many, many cases of this where the street designation fit just enough to be placed vertically, or in one case, diagonally.) The current crop of blades does not have this occur, and almost if not all the blades missing the designations have been replaced; there was only one left earlier this year.

[apeman33]

It appears that these signs are being worded in the same way as Wichita's street blades. For the most part, you won't see "St." unless it's a numbered street or "Ave." but you will see "Rd." and "Dr.". I'm not sure about "Blvd." That seems to be inconsistent as I don't think very many of the ones on McLean have "Blvd."