New signs in Maine??

[mhallack]

These signs have been slowly showing up. 1st pic is the original font, 2nd pic is new font





The newer ones seem to have been appearing over the past year or so, but seem to be done randomly. Why? No idea.

[Ian]

I've seen the new signs as well. The new ones just seem to look like mixed-case series B. To be honest, I like the old ones better.

[roadman]

Despite what the "experts" claim, it has always been my belief that mixed case legends will result in an overall decrease of sign legibility for drivers once you get below 8 inch heights, regardless of the font you use.

And using high intensity prismatic (HIP) sheeting, which the lower signs are obviously fabricated from, doesn't help the issue at all - even if you were to go to <gasp> Clearview fonts.

[froggie]

The "experts" claim that because it's based on actual research and experimentation.  Obviously not everyone sees the same way, but apparently enough did to where FHWA made the change to the MUTCD.

[J N Winkler]

Despite what the "experts" claim, it has always been my belief that mixed case legends will result in an overall decrease of sign legibility for drivers once you get below 8 inch heights, regardless of the font you use.

When the 2003 MUTCD was going through the rulemaking process and it became clear that FHWA would allow mixed-case legend regardless of alphabet series, I argued that FHWA should impose a minimum "floor" in terms of choice of alphabet series.  I suggested specifically that mixed-case be allowed only if it were Series E Modified.  (At the time this was already existing practice for conventional-road guide signing in California, Washington, and a handful of other states.)  In the subsequent Final Rule notice, FHWA responded to my comment by saying that engineers could be trusted to exercise judgment responsibly and use the highly condensed alphabet series with restraint.  Now we see mixed-case Series B and C as the default typefaces for conventional-road guide signing in states like Vermont and Maine.

And using high intensity prismatic (HIP) sheeting, which the lower signs are obviously fabricated from, doesn't help the issue at all - even if you were to go to <gasp> Clearview fonts.

Indeed it doesn't--all the high-type sheeting seems to do is to enhance target value.  I don't know if halation is less bad because the more condensed series have inherently lower stroke width, but I doubt any improvement in this respect is enough to offset the inherently lower unit legibility of the condensed FHWA alphabet series.

The "experts" claim that because it's based on actual research and experimentation.  Obviously not everyone sees the same way, but apparently enough did to where FHWA made the change to the MUTCD.

Actually, I don't think any specific study was carried out into the effectiveness of mixed-case legends which took into account the choice of alphabet series for those legends.  Not all of the changes proposed for any given edition of the MUTCD are driven by research or controlled experimentation, let alone that occurring within the context of the MUTCD experimentation process.  For example, a lot of the new warning signs in the 2009 MUTCD had previously appeared in a FHWA-published overview of nonstandard warning signs (illustrated extensively by uncredited roadgeek photos--for example, some photos I took of stock warning signs in Wyoming were included) and the principal motive for their inclusion in the MUTCD seems to have been to give states a nationally standardized alternative.

[Alps]

There was no research done, for that matter, on reducing stroke width while maintaining the FHWA font. I can't imagine why E(M) is still specified when you no longer have button copy - that's why E exists! Georgia has had success with a reduced-stroke width D font, even with mixed case. Want to reduce halation? Increase intraletter space size.

[J N Winkler]

There was no research done, for that matter, on reducing stroke width while maintaining the FHWA font. I can't imagine why E(M) is still specified when you no longer have button copy - that's why E exists! Georgia has had success with a reduced-stroke width D font, even with mixed case. Want to reduce halation? Increase intraletter space size.

Actually, there has been research into the relative legibility of the FHWA alphabet series, just not in the context of preventing halation, not involving mixed-case alphabet series other than Series E Modified, and not in (recently, as far as I know) the USA.  The 1998 edition of the New Zealand MOTSAM (§ 7.10) quotes the following unit legibilities (meters per millimeter of capital letter height):  Series C 0.5, Series D 0.6, Series E 0.7, Series E Modified 0.75.  It also refers the reader to AS 1742.2 (basically, the Australian transposition of Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs) and Part 8.3 of the Austroads Traffic Engineering Guide for additional detail.

These unit legibilities mean that if you want to use Series E in place of Series E Modified and maintain the same reading distance, you need to raise letter height by 7%.  For Series D and C respectively in lieu of Series E Modified, these values are 25% and 50%.  This edition of MOTSAM appeared well after New Zealand moved to universal use of retroreflective sheeting for all types of traffic sign but before the widespread use of sheetings susceptible to halation.

Georgia DOT's "experiment" with mixed-case Series D in lieu of Series E Modified "worked" (up to a point) because their default height for primary destination legend was 20" uppercase/15" lowercase mixed-case Series D rather than 16" uppercase/12" lowercase Series E Modified.  In short, they were partially compensating for not using Series E Modified by increasing letter height the required 25%.  GDOT has now returned to using Series E Modified at the usual 16"/12" height combination in recent sign refurbishment contracts.

I believe the compensation was only partial because the unit legibilities quoted in MOTSAM are for mixed-case Series E Modified versus uppercase-only Series E, D, and C.  The values are therefore not directly applicable to a comparison between Series E Modified and Series E, D, and C where all alphabets are mixed-case.  AFAIK, nobody has yet measured unit legibilities for the new mixed-case FHWA alphabet series, or if this has been done, the results have not been published in a location where I have access to them.  It is possible, however, to guess based on a rough rule of equal areas (discovered by Forbes and Moskowitz in 1950, and investigated in more detail by the Road Research Laboratory in the late 1950's and early 1960's).  In other words, if you are given a legend in all-uppercase and you want to convert it to mixed-case in the same alphabet series, then to maintain the same reading distance you should increase the base letter height of the mixed-case block in such a way that the area covered by it is approximately the same as the area covered by the all-uppercase version.  Assuming that this rule holds for Series D (again, I have no idea whether it was validated for any alphabet series other than those Forbes, Moskowitz, and the RRL studied), then there is reason to believe that despite the 25% increase in base letter height, the use of mixed-case Series D on GDOT signs resulted in a legibility penalty.

I believe this legibility penalty is part of the reason TxDOT changed from 6" Series D to mixed-case Clearview of comparable condensation level (I think 3-W) with capital letter height of 8" in 2003, when it converted to Clearview for conventional-road guide signs.  I also think it is part of the reason California and Washington have used mixed-case Series E Modified with capital letter height of 8" as their substitute for 6" Series D on the same type of sign.