I <3 Wisconsin Freeway Guide Signs

[vtk]

Drove through Wisconsin on I-90 today.  Love the guide signs.  Sign design practices in that state represent the best I've seen in any part of Ohio from any era, applied consistently everywhere I observed.

[Quillz]

Did you take any pictures?

[JREwing78]

Wisconsin does pretty well with signage, I agree. Pavement condition here tends to be a cut or two above other areas in the Midwest too. It helps when 10-12 more cents per gallon of fuel taxes end up in the highway fund instead of in the general fund.

I personally think Michigan's signage outside of metro Detroit is as good if not better. Both states have a habit of replacing worn signs regularly, and (again, outside of metro Detroit) consistency is very high.

[vtk]

Did you take any pictures?

It was nighttime, so no. Maybe on the drive home.

[DaBigE]

....applied consistently everywhere I observed.

That's mostly because, except for the SE Region, all of the designs come from the same office/people in Madison.

[Brandon]

....applied consistently everywhere I observed.

That's mostly because, except for the SE Region, all of the designs come from the same office/people in Madison.

Compare and contrast with the FIB-Land (aka Illinois) to the south and how different, especially District 1 (Chicago), each district can be.

[Scott5114]

If you like Wisconsin, try Kansas. I remember the first time I was in Wisconsin, finding their signage practices rather similar to Kansas, and Kansas has managed to keep its signs consistent, even in a transition from demountable copy to direct-applied.

[DaBigE]

...even in a transition from demountable copy to direct-applied.

Word on the street is that Wisconsin is considering going that route as well.

[Scott5114]

Which is sad. I've always been a fan of demountable copy. It almost has the charm of button copy, since every letter is hand-placed, so it's not as meticulously perfect as a computer-plotted direct-applied copy sign. It's neat seeing the occasional little quirk like an "s" tilted too far back, and humans tend to kern better than computers (since they rely on "what looks right" rather than a computer's "mathematically, it should look right".

[roadman]

Which is sad. I've always been a fan of demountable copy. It almost has the charm of button copy, since every letter is hand-placed, so it's not as meticulously perfect as a computer-plotted direct-applied copy sign. It's neat seeing the occasional little quirk like an "s" tilted too far back, and humans tend to kern better than computers (since they rely on "what looks right" rather than a computer's "mathematically, it should look right".

Demountable copy also has the advantage that it can be easily corrected in the field should there be a spelling error (like transposed letters) in the legend.  But we all know that DOTs and sign fabricators never ever make mistakes - not!

[Big John]

Demountable copy also has the advantage that it can be easily corrected in the field should there be a spelling error (like transposed letters) in the legend.  But we all know that DOTs and sign fabricators never ever make mistakes - not!

Like this in Wisconsin:
 

[roadman]

Ouch!  An error on all three lines, and a missing arrow.  Hopefully the sign was corrected before the local media discovered it.  Our local FOX station in Boston loves to highlight sign errors - even very subtle ones like "Pilmoth Plantation" - the spelling should be "Plimoth" (old English spelling for the historic site, as opposed to "Plymouth", which is the name of the town).

[Scott5114]

Ouch!  An error on all three lines, and a missing arrow.  Hopefully the sign was corrected before the local media discovered it.

Haha, nope.

[DaBigE]

Ouch!  An error on all three lines, and a missing arrow.  Hopefully the sign was corrected before the local media discovered it.

No, every news outlet in Wisconsin that I'm aware of ran a story on it. I had posted this one elsewhere on these forums a while back. There was another one a few years back along US 41 where the BGS contractor screwed up and made 'Allenton' into 'Allentown'. The local paper did a mini-story with photo about it; unfortunately it appears that I didn't save that one.