To sign, or not to sign?

[mcdonaat]

Coming from a state where parish/county road signage is a crapshoot, it amazes me that some state have county roads that are signed with JCT signs, arrows, and bannered county routes. The most you'll see here is the occasional parish road sine salad posted along Interstate exits, but for regular reassurance shields, I've seen parish lines where the shield will change.

So, here's the question - if you were the head traffic engineer, and you had money to spend, would you actually sign parish/county highways with numbers, or spend the money on very nice street signs for those same roads?

[Alex]

For me numbers always trump road names, so yes full signage for county/parish roads.

[Zeffy]

For me numbers always trump road names, so yes full signage for county/parish roads.

This. In New Jersey, County Roads (especially 5xx series numbers) are very important to the road infrastructure and are signed at many intersections, on and off highways. I don't know how Louisiana's county/parish roads compare to the state roads, but if they are an important part of the system, then money should definitely be spent on signing it. Plus - when a county road crosses a county line in New Jersey, it often changes names (Amwell Rd in Somerset County to Old York Rd in Hunterdon County is an example), which only creates more confusion than just referring to it as 'County Road 514' and signing it as such. Street name signs on traffic signals will always include the county road next to the road name.

[Pete from Boston]

For me numbers always trump road names, so yes full signage for county/parish roads.

This. In New Jersey, County Roads (especially 5xx series numbers) are very important to the road infrastructure and are signed at many intersections, on and off highways. I don't know how Louisiana's county/parish roads compare to the state roads, but if they are an important part of the system, then money should definitely be spent on signing it. Plus - when a county road crosses a county line in New Jersey, it often changes names (Amwell Rd in Somerset County to Old York Rd in Hunterdon County is an example), which only creates more confusion than just referring to it as 'County Road 514' and signing it as such. Street name signs on traffic signals will always include the county road next to the road name.

It varies by location but in some cases there are so damn many county routes it starts becoming wasted money.

In Bergen County, the county of NJ with which I'm most familiar, I suspect the county route network was last of real importance as a network of signed routes before the postwar development wave.  People there navigate by names, not numbers.  The 500 routes are a little different, because something like 502 provides an east-west hodgepodge of streets where no continuous route exists.  But then you have 503, which almost no one is going to use to find their way from Montvale to Moonachie, since numerous better alternatives now exist. 

Then there are the many mile-or-two-long roads that have numbers no one uses or ever will use (e.g. .27 miles of Main St. in River Edge) and posting signs there is a waste of scarce money.

[Scott5114]

Probably the best approach to take would be for a county to select a small subset of the most important county roads for the purpose of actually getting somewhere (i.e. not just busy streets, but ones that would actually be used by someone on a medium-length trip, or connectors between more major routes), and sign those as county routes. Giving the full shield treatment to every little county-maintained dead-end street with 3 houses on it is just a waste of money.

[Alex]

Probably the best approach to take would be for a county to select a small subset of the most important county roads for the purpose of actually getting somewhere (i.e. not just busy streets, but ones that would actually be used by someone on a medium-length trip, or connectors between more major routes), and sign those as county routes. Giving the full shield treatment to every little county-maintained dead-end street with 3 houses on it is just a waste of money.

Definitely the way to go. I would not want every dead end road, or park road, etc. to be shielded, just the important through routes or connectors of significance. Other routes should be signed either with CR XXX as an addendum on the green street blade, or the way Virginia does with their minor secondary routes with the small placards.

Sumter County, FL comes to mind as they have their own county road numbering system that overlays the existing state-wide system leftover from the secondary route days. The Sumter County routes should be referenced on green street signs only, yet some are signed (even subdivision entrances occasionally receive shielding from the intersecting highway).

[Mr. Matté]

Plus - when a county road crosses a county line in New Jersey, it often changes names (Amwell Rd in Somerset County to Old York Rd in Hunterdon County is an example), which only creates more confusion than just referring to it as 'County Road 514' and signing it as such.

Hey, at least your counties sign their routes. Mercer barely has anything; the number of instances of a directional banner that appears on a 6xx route here is something I can count on one hand.

EDIT: Update to my comment on Mercer County signage

[Zeffy]

Hey, at least your counties sign their routes. Mercer barely has anything; the number of instances of a directional banner that appears on a 6xx route here is something I can count on one hand.

I can barely read Mercer County shields when they are on a street name sign.    But yes, it's true that Somerset signs much more amounts of 6xx routes compared to Mercer. I've only been to Somerset, Hunterdon, Mercer, Monmouth, and Middlesex counties though, so I wouldn't know much about Bergen County (and others not listed).

[Pete from Boston]

Plus - when a county road crosses a county line in New Jersey, it often changes names (Amwell Rd in Somerset County to Old York Rd in Hunterdon County is an example), which only creates more confusion than just referring to it as 'County Road 514' and signing it as such.

Hey, at least your counties sign their routes. Mercer barely has anything; the number of instances of a directional banner that appears on a 6xx route here is something I can count on one hand.

We barely even have county governments.  8 out of 14 here exist only in the capacities of criminal justice and former employee pension fund.  Counties otherwise serve mostly as geographical fictions.

There was a Middlesex County 27 sign up in Stow a few years ago on MA 27.  That general area seems particularly fertile for mis-signings.

[jbnv]

if you were the head traffic engineer, and you had money to spend, would you actually sign parish/county highways with numbers, or spend the money on very nice street signs for those same roads?

Probably the best approach to take would be for a county to select a small subset of the most important county roads for the purpose of actually getting somewhere (i.e. not just busy streets, but ones that would actually be used by someone on a medium-length trip, or connectors between more major routes), and sign those as county routes.

This is why I am proposing to use decommissioned Louisiana state highways as the basis for parish highway systems. State highways, as bad as they are, are almost always in better shape than parish roads. And I can't think of many instances where I would use a parish road to go somewhere other than someone's house. It really varies from parish to parish: We have urban parishes where an extensive network of numbered routes makes sense, we have rural parishes that don't have anywhere to go off the state routes, and we have parishes where you can't go far off the state grid anyway because of terrain.

So here's what I would do: Help the urban and suburban parishes establish their own road departments and take over secondary routes. (This will help in places like Lafayette where state maintenance of some roads is actually hindering needed improvements.) For the rural parishes, establish conventions for preserving the integrity of waterway highways and other decommissioned highways that cross parish lines. Otherwise, I would not expect too much from the rural parishes unless they asked for help.

[formulanone]

Probably the best approach to take would be for a county to select a small subset of the most important county roads for the purpose of actually getting somewhere (i.e. not just busy streets, but ones that would actually be used by someone on a medium-length trip, or connectors between more major routes), and sign those as county routes. Giving the full shield treatment to every little county-maintained dead-end street with 3 houses on it is just a waste of money.

Definitely the way to go. I would not want every dead end road, or park road, etc. to be shielded, just the important through routes or connectors of significance.

Sumter County, FL comes to mind as they have their own county road numbering system that overlays the existing state-wide system leftover from the secondary route days. The Sumter County routes should be referenced on green street signs only, yet some are signed...

Sumter, along with Pinellas County are unusual in that they have their own systems, the latter using the MUTCD pentagons much more frequently. The rest of the state usually just uses them for deprecated Secondary or downgraded State Roads; typically they denote a route that at least connects to another route, or a locally significant road (there's some gravel/dirt road exceptions). Typically, the county system fits their grid, too.

Alabama varies from having no county roads signed in one County, to every possible road signed with a number in another County. It's helpful when consulting an map, although generally it doesn't guarantee that it's paved or even interconnects. The numbering system varies from county to county, some are sequential; others seem to be scattered, even more try to use numbers which aren't likely to have duplicates (Pike, Cullman use many four-digit numbers).

So, significant connectors, long routes, old alignments, intersections of major roads...after that, it really doesn't need to be signed. It becomes visual overkill, at that point.

[txstateends]

At first, I saw the OP post and thought about TX, compared to other states that do sign CRs on an equal level as state/US/interstates, and figured it would cost WAAAY too much for a state with 254 counties to implement.  Then I realized, duh, TX does sign pretty much every CR with various sizes of guide signs at it's turnoff from a numbered road (and most are signed with a BGS in some form from a freeway/interstate).  You'd need a few more sign structures than what is currently used if TX did an equal level of signing of pentagon-shielded CRs along with the other numbered routes.  The big hurdle, other than whatever the cost difference, would be the total change in philosophy at TxDOT of the equal signage importance.

Ummm, wow, I thought again, guess I'm way off.  Forgot about the myriad of CR intersections off of numbered highways .... whoa-d'oh!!  Oh, and the JCTs and the reassurances.  I guess it's just as well that TxDOT doesn't do CRs like other states then.  The sign shops would be going 24/7 just making enough CR shields for each county (if they didn't make the counties do it themselves)....

[CrystalWalrein]

Seeing as I've spent a lot of my life in New Jersey and Florida, I'm used to county routes being posted with some consistency. The only problem is that when you don't have townships or other municipalities below the county level that account for every piece of land, it's often the county that maintains roads in unincorporated areas. It could be one thing to say that I wish that all county roads in Florida could be posted, but by that would I mean former secondary state roads only or any other major road the county has built, regardless of the communities it serves? (Jacaranda Boulevard in Sarasota County, signed as CR 765 from I-75 only, is a good example. Then you have Cameron Parish in Louisiana, which numbers and signs every single road....)

I would say that in the South a county route gets a number if it serves as a major thoroughfare through or between cities, and if the state is committed to granting a portion of the money for the upkeep of that road (but less than they spend in proportion on state highways).

At first, I saw the OP post and thought about TX, compared to other states that do sign CRs on an equal level as state/US/interstates, and figured it would cost WAAAY too much for a state with 254 counties to implement.  Then I realized, duh, TX does sign pretty much every CR with various sizes of guide signs at it's turnoff from a numbered road (and most are signed with a BGS in some form from a freeway/interstate).  You'd need a few more sign structures than what is currently used if TX did an equal level of signing of pentagon-shielded CRs along with the other numbered routes.  The big hurdle, other than whatever the cost difference, would be the total change in philosophy at TxDOT of the equal signage importance.

Ummm, wow, I thought again, guess I'm way off.  Forgot about the myriad of CR intersections off of numbered highways .... whoa-d'oh!!  Oh, and the JCTs and the reassurances.  I guess it's just as well that TxDOT doesn't do CRs like other states then.  The sign shops would be going 24/7 just making enough CR shields for each county (if they didn't make the counties do it themselves)....

From what I see on Google Maps both Reeves and Loving Counties use the standard pentagon, but that's it.

[txstateends]

From what I see on Google Maps both Reeves and Loving Counties use the standard pentagon, but that's it.

I've seen them in Anderson and Rusk counties, but just where a speed limit sign or reassurance sign (if it were a regular numbered road) would be after turning off from a regular numbered road.  Most counties I've seen use various forms of street sign blades.

[mcdonaat]

I know that in many parishes, the side roads and backstreets are signed with 112-A or something of that matter. But, you walk a fine line between wasting money and actually doing something useful. Parish roads are often signed as just a number on a street blade, but when you hit the parishes that actually have the shields, it's a throwback in time.

There are few parish roads that are in better shape than the state roads they connect. The Pollock Airbase Road in Grant Parish is a rare parish road that is 55 MPH, with striping and white fog lines. However, most of Grant Parish is maintained by the USFS, and has three-dimensional plastic National Forest signage, which looks amazing!

[bulldog1979]

Probably the best approach to take would be for a county to select a small subset of the most important county roads for the purpose of actually getting somewhere (i.e. not just busy streets, but ones that would actually be used by someone on a medium-length trip, or connectors between more major routes), and sign those as county routes. Giving the full shield treatment to every little county-maintained dead-end street with 3 houses on it is just a waste of money.

Definitely the way to go. I would not want every dead end road, or park road, etc. to be shielded, just the important through routes or connectors of significance. Other routes should be signed either with CR XXX as an addendum on the green street blade, or the way Virginia does with their minor secondary routes with the small placards.

Sumter County, FL comes to mind as they have their own county road numbering system that overlays the existing state-wide system leftover from the secondary route days. The Sumter County routes should be referenced on green street signs only, yet some are signed (even subdivision entrances occasionally receive shielding from the intersecting highway).

Here in Marquette County, Michigan, we have primary and local CRs. The primaries have three-digit numbers, and the locals have two- or three-letter designations. Primary CRs use the old-style square markers near intersections. The street sign blades have a local name with a slash followed by the designation, or they use the designation only if there is now local name.

For example: "MIDWAY DR / 502" (CR 502) and "HERITAGE DR / JAD" for two segments of old US 41/M-28, but "COUNTY ROAD HQ" (no other name).

[dgolub]

Probably the best approach to take would be for a county to select a small subset of the most important county roads for the purpose of actually getting somewhere (i.e. not just busy streets, but ones that would actually be used by someone on a medium-length trip, or connectors between more major routes), and sign those as county routes. Giving the full shield treatment to every little county-maintained dead-end street with 3 houses on it is just a waste of money.

Nassau County in New York does this on paper, in that only the major roads covering long distances are assigned county route numbers.  Most county roads are unnumbered.  However, Nassau does not post any county route signs, so it's just on paper.  I wish that they would, though.

[WichitaRoads]

Kansas, for the most part, seems to be a hodge-podge. Some counties use them copiously (Douglas, Leavenworth), while some shun them altogether for plain-old named roads. Heck, there's even one (Harvey) that uses the pentagonal signs in blue and gold, but in place of the number, they post the name of the road - the number is then placed very tine at the bottom, e.g. WOODLAWN (Harvey County XXX) - http://goo.gl/maps/qfevW

In Sedgwick County, they don't use them at all - either because we have a plethora of state, federal, and Interstate routes, or because the local names (ordinals, mostly) are well-known enough and/or jive with the old colloquial names of the roads, e.g. 247th Street West/Andale Road, or 135th Street West/Clearwater Road.

I, however, can still think of one route I'd like a state route on - 21st Street North, between Cheney Lake and the west city limit. At the lake, it meets the north terminus of a spur route from US 54/400, K-251 (at least until it's handed-back, too). That route could be renumbered or left alone and run east along 21st into Wichita, and then to I-235 at Zoo Blvd., or to the eventual Northwest Bypass, which would intersect 21st Street about three miles west of the city limit. The road is wide, with good sight-lines, and a 55 limit.

ICTRds

[cjk374]

https://www.google.com/maps/@32.546879,-93.008152,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sPDz0BOzkjooai9BjYJk16A!2e0?hl=en

You could always do what Bienville Parish does, & put both a name & parish road number on a blade.

My preference would be to use numbers only, and I wish the parishes would sign their roads with full signage system wide.

[Brian556]

Jackson Co, Alabama signs every little county road with shields. Seems really absurd.

Volusia County, Florida overdoes county road shielding. In addition to the former state routes, they have a ton of roads they numbered themselves that get shields. Has to be inconvenient for FDOT, since they have to post shields within their rights-of-way for these roads.

Flagler County does it right. Only signs former state routes with CR shields. It does have numbered county roads that are not former state routes, but those just get green street name blades.

[mcdonaat]

https://www.google.com/maps/@32.546879,-93.008152,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sPDz0BOzkjooai9BjYJk16A!2e0?hl=en

You could always do what Bienville Parish does, & put both a name & parish road number on a blade.

My preference would be to use numbers only, and I wish the parishes would sign their roads with full signage system wide.

https://www.google.com/maps?ll=32.512765,-93.066967&spn=0.000036,0.022681&cbll=32.512766,-93.067085&layer=c&panoid=Z5G0YB-dIVcB3_kiT_SW1w&cbp=12,149.15,,1,8.11&t=m&z=16

Bienville does both - signs roads on the street blade, AND signs with the blue pentagon.

[wxfree]

When I first started driving, a lot of the county roads around here either had no sign or one-sided signs positioned such that you had to be facing down the road to see them (some of which still stand).  In those days, you basically just had to know how to get where you were going.  Shortly afterward, TxDOT put up advance signs and blades for nearly all state/county road junctions and in some places blades were installed at county/county road junctions.  It was my understanding that it had to do with 911 addresses and that the old rural route addresses were replaced with city-like street addresses.

While I appreciated the expectation of competency in navigation that existed in my early years, I recognize that for many people it's very helpful to have signage for every road.  Even given the proliferation of GPS devices, I think it's beneficial to have signs.  Around here, with metes-and-bounds surveys, some of the county roads follow twisting and confusing paths, so signs really help (see Johnson County Road 1117 and wonder who thought that was a good idea).  In addition, before the signs, some places didn't seem to have consistent designations.  I recall Bosque County, in particular, as a place with county road numbers that varied based on which map you happened to have and had no signs to verify any particular number as correct.

[cpzilliacus]

So, here's the question - if you were the head traffic engineer, and you had money to spend, would you actually sign parish/county highways with numbers, or spend the money on very nice street signs for those same roads?

Being from (and living in) Maryland, where counties and municipalities never sign their own routes (and the county pentagon (M1-6) is effectively struck-out in the state's 2011 MUTCD supplement), I wish the state, counties and municipalities would sign some of their county-maintained roads (that carry heavy traffic volumes) with route numbers.  Examples might include Northern Parkway in Baltimore City; Ritchie-Marlboro Road in Prince George's County; Shady Grove Road in Montgomery County; and Broken Land Parkway in Howard County.

In my fantasy world, all states would number secondary roads in some way, and sign them with name and route number on a consistent basis (West Virginia DOT is very good about this).

[cjk374]

https://www.google.com/maps/@32.546879,-93.008152,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sPDz0BOzkjooai9BjYJk16A!2e0?hl=en

You could always do what Bienville Parish does, & put both a name & parish road number on a blade.

My preference would be to use numbers only, and I wish the parishes would sign their roads with full signage system wide.

https://www.google.com/maps?ll=32.512765,-93.066967&spn=0.000036,0.022681&cbll=32.512766,-93.067085&layer=c&panoid=Z5G0YB-dIVcB3_kiT_SW1w&cbp=12,149.15,,1,8.11&t=m&z=16

Bienville does both - signs roads on the street blade, AND signs with the blue pentagon.

I don't think Bienville is putting up new pentagons.  The signs that are up now were up when the E-911 system was established.

[KEK Inc.]

Washington doesn't label their county routes.  California has them, but they're poorly signed that noone recognizes the roads as such.

"Hey, I was just on G10 going to Oakridge mall the other day!"

"You numb-nut, you say 'Blossom Hill Road.'"