UK Roads Thread

[vdeane]

I know what you mean, but I wouldn't necessarily describe it as fear. Compared to the UK (and what I understand of other countries internationally as well), it seems more like a lack of adaptability. US drivers seem very limited in their ability to adapt to different situations and in fact often seem to take offense to others adapting. And like you mentioned, there even seems to be a tendency to panic when anything doesn't go exactly as expected which probably stems from our unique combo of higher road standards (creating higher expectations) and less driver training.

I mean, it sure feels like fear when people hesitate all the time when driving.  It's to the point where I am that merging onto an expressway at 40 mph is the norm.

[Rothman]

I know what you mean, but I wouldn't necessarily describe it as fear. Compared to the UK (and what I understand of other countries internationally as well), it seems more like a lack of adaptability. US drivers seem very limited in their ability to adapt to different situations and in fact often seem to take offense to others adapting. And like you mentioned, there even seems to be a tendency to panic when anything doesn't go exactly as expected which probably stems from our unique combo of higher road standards (creating higher expectations) and less driver training.

I mean, it sure feels like fear when people hesitate all the time when driving.  It's to the point where I am that merging onto an expressway at 40 mph is the norm.

Man, someone was trying to merge from I-80 EB to I-81 NB in front of me at around that speed yesterday night.  Then, they weren't watching when they were merging over.

I'd imagine the UK is less car-centric than the US, though?  Wonder if that cuts down the number of people behind the wheel that would rather not be there.

[kphoger]

US drivers seem very limited in their ability to adapt to different situations and in fact often seem to take offense to others adapting.

This is maybe the biggest difference in driving behavior that I've noticed between the USA and Mexico too.  Drivers can do some pretty boneheaded and/or reckless stuff on the road down there, but nobody seems to get offended the way American drivers do at comparatively minor things.

[webny99]

US drivers seem very limited in their ability to adapt to different situations and in fact often seem to take offense to others adapting.

This is maybe the biggest difference in driving behavior that I've noticed between the USA and Mexico too.  Drivers can do some pretty boneheaded and/or reckless stuff on the road down there, but nobody seems to get offended the way American drivers do at comparatively minor things.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more it seems like every negative interaction I've ever been involved in while driving stems from either me reacting to another driver's lack of adaptability or another driver taking offense to my adaptability. I really can't think of any exceptions, where I've been the less adaptable driver.

And yet... I'd probably still be considered highly inflexible in UK/Europe/Mexico.

[english si]

Traffic signals have a short amber phase before turning green so you can already be accelerating by the time it turns green. This basically validates what I already often do.

It's Red+Amber. Amber on its own is just before it turns red.

Passing zone rules are confusing. A surprising amount of two lane roads have legal passing zones, even ones with frequent curves that would be double yellow solid in the US.

We have the assumption that legal ≠ safe and let drivers use their own judgement. See also our speed limits (though many councils have sought to undermine that).

In the London area, an awesome public transit network is countered by a lack of urban highways, so it's still very congested on balance.

Smeed's Law (from 1949) states that average road vehicle speeds in Central London will always be roughly 9mph - he had considerable data from the past that showed that it had stayed the same as car usage rose and other uses (including horse-drawn carriages) fell, and all the data since has shown the same - whether they do road construction (eg the late 50s/early 60s widening of the Euston Road, conversion of part of the Kingsway tram subway into the Aldwych tunnel to bypass the large gyratory they were adding, those large one-way systems designed to boost capacity and ease flows, etc) or road diets (eg the replacement of one carriageway of The Embankment with improved active travel, the removal of cars from Oxford Street, removing the one-way systems and gyratories, pedestrianisation of certain roads (or at least the cul-de-sacing of them for cars), etc) it's stayed true.

Similar is true for further out - congestion is self-regulating and London is over-saturated with demand.

Gaps in the motorway network. Outside the London area, east-west connectivity is particularly lacking.

It's not really any better or worse in the London area than the rest of the country. It's also a bit better nationwide if you consider the high quality dual carriageways like the A14, A55 or A66. It also doesn't help that the northern half of England is split in two by a mountain range.

Lack of route number shields on signage – most signs are text-only.

And the road numbers are generally among that text, separate (even a different font on motorways). Sure we don't use shields (though we may have patches of a different colour for a road number on signs), but we sign road numbers the vast majority of the time.

The route hierarchy is also more complex than simple tiered system in the US.

There's a simple tier system in the US?

And in the UK we use different colour direction signs for the more important roads (blue for motorways, green for primary), rather than everything being green like the US.

No yellow lane separators for two-way traffic!? Lane separators are white for both one way and two way roads – and they're often dashed (meaning passing is allowed) so you basically just have to know if there's oncoming traffic or not. I had never thought about it before, but it was a surprising adjustment - confusing at best and dangerous at worst.

They are different dashes for direction separation and lane separation and there's usually lots of clues (signs, behaviour of other vehicles, typically that there's another carriageway not very far away...) beyond that as to whether you are on a one-way carriageway/road or a two-way one. Be aware, and be adaptable - 'tis the British way of driving.

Bone up on the rules before driving in a foreign land (be aware). Don't go panicking as there's no yellow lines in the middle of the road in a country that only uses them kerbside to denote parking restrictions (be adaptable). . But if in doubt, just don't move over into the right-hand lane and you will be fine.

[ElishaGOtis]

We have the assumption that legal ≠ safe and let drivers use their own judgement. See also our speed limits (though many councils have sought to undermine that).

Motorways have entered the chat.

[vdeane]

There's a simple tier system in the US?

I assume he means interstate -> US route -> state route -> county route -> local.

[Rothman]

Smee?

[Scott5114]

And in the UK we use different colour direction signs for the more important roads (blue for motorways, green for primary), rather than everything being green like the US.

Feels like you'd have to be pretty daft to actually need the differently-coloured signs to tell whether you're on a motorway or not (are the ramps and bridges and chopsticks signs not enough of a clue?). I'm not one to be rah-rah-America, but colouring signs according to function rather than route number seems quite a bit more, well... functional.

[freebrickproductions]

And in the UK we use different colour direction signs for the more important roads (blue for motorways, green for primary), rather than everything being green like the US.

Feels like you'd have to be pretty daft to actually need the differently-coloured signs to tell whether you're on a motorway or not (are the ramps and bridges and chopsticks signs not enough of a clue?). I'm not one to be rah-rah-America, but colouring signs according to function rather than route number seems quite a bit more, well... functional.

To be fair, I imagine it's a result of the UK using alphanumeric designations for highway numbers (i.e. M1, A3, B775, etc.) and not using shields. I seem to recall most of Europe also color-codes their signage based on if you're on a freeway or not, and most of Europe is also like the UK in that their highways are designated with alphanumeric numbers as well.

I'd imagine a number of Europeans used to such a system probably think it's strange that we don't color-code our highway signage based on route type when they first encounter it (whether in person or online).

[BrynM65]

And in the UK we use different colour direction signs for the more important roads (blue for motorways, green for primary), rather than everything being green like the US.

Feels like you'd have to be pretty daft to actually need the differently-coloured signs to tell whether you're on a motorway or not (are the ramps and bridges and chopsticks signs not enough of a clue?). I'm not one to be rah-rah-America, but colouring signs according to function rather than route number seems quite a bit more, well... functional.

British motorway signs were a result of a massive panic by the government in the late 1950s; our original direction signage system was absolutely useless for roads with high speeds and we didn't know what to do about that. We actually took inspiration from Germany and California - the Anderson Committee specifically criticised the all black guide signs in CA as "too funereal", so they opted for blue because it was working well in Germany, which in 1958 was the only European state with anything resembling a proper controlled access network. Had we been a few years later in building motorways I strongly imagine we'd have been using FHWA and green signs on motorways.

The Anderson Committee also hated the motorway symbol - that's how we ended up with that weird circular thing on the Preston Bypass (which also flopped because what the heck did it mean?) and why we relied on the large worded "NO" signs well until the mid-1970s.

I definitely don't want to spark a war here, but the US guide sign system is fairly reliable and consistent on controlled access roads, but the second you're off that it is... not great. However, the UK guide sign system has become overly complicated and thrives off hyper-localism (take the M25 as a fantastic example; the control destinations are either the airports or Watford. The rest of the UK? Nah, we don't need that on signs.

I don't think solitary sign colours are a problem - the Netherlands and Belgium manage with all blue signs (although Belgium does use green for approach signage entering freeways from surface roads for distinction).

The "tier" system in the UK has also been messed up somewhat with the introduction of primary routes in the 1960s, but the rot set in when "trunk routes" were created in 1936 - instead of providing a new route classification we simply strung together existing A roads. For example, the Preston to Halifax trunk road consisted of the A59, A677, A6119, A679, and then A646. Maps, but not signs, would show these as A646(T) for example. Trunk routes, of course, were merely a funding mechanism and they never had a minimum standard unlike federally funded interstates (let's ignore the rule breaking here for the sake of simplicity).

For what it's worth, only Norway appears to bother with a yellow centre line to divide opposing traffic flows in Europe. The rest of the continent makes do with different length dashed depending on two-way or one-way or solid lines for no passing.

Car-dependency is an issue in the UK though; away from London many places want that All American Car Owning Democracy, but nobody wants the All American Highways that come with that. The obvious dichotomy of a Victorian downtown and parking right outside of the shop is lost on British people, they don't want to walk anywhere but they want walkable cities. If you think urbanist arguments Stateside are hard work, try being a transport planner here

[Scott5114]

I definitely don't want to spark a war here, but the US guide sign system is fairly reliable and consistent on controlled access roads, but the second you're off that it is... not great.

I'm curious why you say that. I will grant that perhaps some of the destinations chosen are less useful than others, which is mostly because each state is free to come up with its own method of choosing these. (AASHTO only coordinates control cities on Interstate highways.) Some states do this in an ad-hoc manner, while Kansas has a flowchart for doing so which takes settlement size, distance, and political stature (i.e. is it a county seat) into account.

Other than that I'm not entirely sure what weaknesses the US directional sign system has. It's all done in a fairly standard manner (well, outside of New Mexico, but the "welcome to New Mexico" signs are bright yellow so you shouldn't end up there without knowing) so once you've been through a few junctions parsing the information presented should become easy. I suppose you could fault it for emphasizing route numbers above destinations, but to me that is a cultural difference that the signs follow—Americans simply tend to navigate by route number rather than by waypoint. I suspect this tendency developed due to the fact that in a large part of the country for a very long time non-numbered roads simply weren't guaranteed to be suited for all-weather travel. (And in some very specific parts of the country they're still not—vast swaths of the Navajo lands remain inaccessible after rain.) This meant it was not enough to point out a road which goes to Elk City—you specifically wanted to know the road was US-66 because that is the road which the state put all of the resources into keeping in usable condition.

[freebrickproductions]

I definitely don't want to spark a war here, but the US guide sign system is fairly reliable and consistent on controlled access roads, but the second you're off that it is... not great.

I'm curious why you say that. I will grant that perhaps some of the destinations chosen are less useful than others, which is mostly because each state is free to come up with its own method of choosing these. (AASHTO only coordinates control cities on Interstate highways.) Some states do this in an ad-hoc manner, while Kansas has a flowchart for doing so which takes settlement size, distance, and political stature (i.e. is it a county seat) into account.

Other than that I'm not entirely sure what weaknesses the US directional sign system has. It's all done in a fairly standard manner (well, outside of New Mexico, but the "welcome to New Mexico" signs are bright yellow so you shouldn't end up there without knowing) so once you've been through a few junctions parsing the information presented should become easy. I suppose you could fault it for emphasizing route numbers above destinations, but to me that is a cultural difference that the signs follow—Americans simply tend to navigate by route number rather than by waypoint. I suspect this tendency developed due to the fact that in a large part of the country for a very long time non-numbered roads simply weren't guaranteed to be suited for all-weather travel. (And in some very specific parts of the country they're still not—vast swaths of the Navajo lands remain inaccessible after rain.) This meant it was not enough to point out a road which goes to Elk City—you specifically wanted to know the road was US-66 because that is the road which the state put all of the resources into keeping in usable condition.

To be fair, the quality of directional signage on US and state highways (as well as county roads) very much varies a bit on a state-by-state basis. For example, when it comes to two state (or US) highways intersecting at a 4-way intersection in a rural location, here's how a few different states handle it:
Alabama
Georgia
Tennessee
Mississippi
Florida
South Carolina
North Carolina
Kentucky
Illinois
Indiana

And the less said about county-maintained directional signage, especially here in Alabama, the better.

[Scott5114]

To be fair, the quality of directional signage on US and state highways (as well as county roads) very much varies a bit on a state-by-state basis. [...]

And the less said about county-maintained directional signage, especially here in Alabama, the better.

Well, sure, but I'm mostly speaking on a MUTCD-vs.-TSRGD basis—if actual implementation doesn't follow the manual then that's quite a different type of problem.

[kphoger]

To be fair, the quality of directional signage on US and state highways (as well as county roads) very much varies a bit on a state-by-state basis. For example, when it comes to two state (or US) highways intersecting at a 4-way intersection in a rural location, here's how a few different states handle it:

New Mexico

New Mexico (if you're lucky)

[Scott5114]

To be fair, the quality of directional signage on US and state highways (as well as county roads) very much varies a bit on a state-by-state basis. For example, when it comes to two state (or US) highways intersecting at a 4-way intersection in a rural location, here's how a few different states handle it:

New Mexico

New Mexico (if you're lucky)

Yeah, notice that there isn't any actual sign telling you which road is NM 120—your only indication that you've missed the turn is when you leave town and get an NM 39 reassurance shield (which kind of depends on you understanding that reassurance shields only happen after junctions and thus realizing that NMDOT shorted you a sign and you need to turn around).

But this isn't a problem with the MUTCD, this is a problem with NMDOT not following the MUTCD by omitting a required sign. I would guess that UK signage would break down just as badly if the relevant agency cherry-picked which parts of TSRGD they wanted to follow.

(What a sad little town that is—check out the bank which is only open on Tuesdays from 10:30am to 3:30 pm!)

[webny99]

Gaps in the motorway network. Outside the London area, east-west connectivity is particularly lacking.

It's not really any better or worse in the London area than the rest of the country. It's also a bit better nationwide if you consider the high quality dual carriageways like the A14, A55 or A66. It also doesn't help that the northern half of England is split in two by a mountain range.

Interesting. I'll have to (mostly) disagree with that. Practically the entire motorway network in the southern half of England radiates from Greater London, so if your origin/destination is in Greater London there's almost certainly a motorway connection to M25 (all bets are off for destinations inside the M25, of course). If we're talking east-west specifically, there's M3, M4, M2, and M20, plus the north and south sides of M25 itself which function as an east-west connection of sorts. The only real outliers are places that don't have a motorway connection to anywhere - like East Anglia and most of Wales.

No yellow lane separators for two-way traffic!? Lane separators are white for both one way and two way roads – and they're often dashed (meaning passing is allowed) so you basically just have to know if there's oncoming traffic or not. I had never thought about it before, but it was a surprising adjustment - confusing at best and dangerous at worst.

They are different dashes for direction separation and lane separation and there's usually lots of clues (signs, behaviour of other vehicles, typically that there's another carriageway not very far away...) beyond that as to whether you are on a one-way carriageway/road or a two-way one. Be aware, and be adaptable - 'tis the British way of driving.

Thanks for the link. That makes a bit more sense now, but the lack of yellow centerlines is still jarring. The longer style dash also seems to be used quite frequently on both motorways and non-motorways, adding to the confusion.

There's a simple tier system in the US?

I assume he means interstate -> US route -> state route -> county route -> local.

Yup, particularly the first three (since the last two can vary quite a bit between and even within states).

[kphoger]

the lack of yellow centerlines is still jarring

But, as has been mentioned, it's completely normal across nearly all of Europe.  And many other regions of the world as well.  I'm actually surprised you expected otherwise.

[webny99]

I definitely don't want to spark a war here, but the US guide sign system is fairly reliable and consistent on controlled access roads, but the second you're off that it is... not great.

I'm curious why you say that. I will grant that perhaps some of the destinations chosen are less useful than others, which is mostly because each state is free to come up with its own method of choosing these. (AASHTO only coordinates control cities on Interstate highways.) Some states do this in an ad-hoc manner, while Kansas has a flowchart for doing so which takes settlement size, distance, and political stature (i.e. is it a county seat) into account.

Other than that I'm not entirely sure what weaknesses the US directional sign system has. It's all done in a fairly standard manner (well, outside of New Mexico, but the "welcome to New Mexico" signs are bright yellow so you shouldn't end up there without knowing) so once you've been through a few junctions parsing the information presented should become easy. I suppose you could fault it for emphasizing route numbers above destinations, but to me that is a cultural difference that the signs follow—Americans simply tend to navigate by route number rather than by waypoint.

To be fair, the quality of directional signage on US and state highways (as well as county roads) very much varies a bit on a state-by-state basis. For example, when it comes to two state (or US) highways intersecting at a 4-way intersection in a rural location, here's how a few different states handle it:
[links snipped]

What really stands out is the US's reliance on standalone route shields once off the Interstate system. Route shields generally do the trick, but they're just much smaller and easier to miss than BGS's or LGS's, and they require separate signage for the route destinations/mileages. It would be great to see more interstate-style signage (meaning route shield + destination integrated on a single sign panel, à la Washington state) on long-distance US and state routes. To my knowledge, Washington is the only state that uses this style of signage somewhat consistently on non-Interstates, but it would be nice to see it more widely adopted.

As for the UK, despite the lack of route shields, I think their signage for non-motorway junctions is a step above ours in the US for the same reason: the message is typically integrated into a single sign panel rather than appearing piecemeal, so one sign panel can convey a message that would take multiple signs in the US (example).

[webny99]

the lack of yellow centerlines is still jarring

But, as has been mentioned, it's completely normal across nearly all of Europe.  And many other regions of the world as well.  I'm actually surprised you expected otherwise.

And that's exactly why it was so jarring. Despite being a roadgeek and having explored countless such roads in the UK and Europe via Street View over many years, I never really thought about it from behind a computer screen. But as soon as I experienced it in real life (take this road, for example), I couldn't stop thinking about how weird it was to have to actually look for context (including oncoming traffic!) to determine whether a road was one way or two way. It was easily the biggest "surprise" factor to driving in the UK... despite being completely obvious beforehand.

[freebrickproductions]

But as soon as I experienced it in real life (take this road, for example), I couldn't stop thinking about how weird it was to have to actually look for context (including incoming traffic!) to determine whether a road was one way or two way. It was easily the biggest "surprise" factor to driving in the UK... despite being completely obvious beforehand.

Looking at that road, I have to wonder if it was originally a three-lane road, where the center lane would be useable by vehicles in both directions to pass over vehicles in front of them. Obviously such "suicide lanes" were eventually deemed dangerous and I believe they've all long since been eliminated, though many were just simply restriped to being extra-wide two-lane roads like that one, IIRC.

[Scott5114]

I definitely don't want to spark a war here, but the US guide sign system is fairly reliable and consistent on controlled access roads, but the second you're off that it is... not great.

I'm curious why you say that. I will grant that perhaps some of the destinations chosen are less useful than others, which is mostly because each state is free to come up with its own method of choosing these. (AASHTO only coordinates control cities on Interstate highways.) Some states do this in an ad-hoc manner, while Kansas has a flowchart for doing so which takes settlement size, distance, and political stature (i.e. is it a county seat) into account.

Other than that I'm not entirely sure what weaknesses the US directional sign system has. It's all done in a fairly standard manner (well, outside of New Mexico, but the "welcome to New Mexico" signs are bright yellow so you shouldn't end up there without knowing) so once you've been through a few junctions parsing the information presented should become easy. I suppose you could fault it for emphasizing route numbers above destinations, but to me that is a cultural difference that the signs follow—Americans simply tend to navigate by route number rather than by waypoint.

To be fair, the quality of directional signage on US and state highways (as well as county roads) very much varies a bit on a state-by-state basis. For example, when it comes to two state (or US) highways intersecting at a 4-way intersection in a rural location, here's how a few different states handle it:
[links snipped]

What really stands out is the US's reliance on standalone route shields once off the Interstate system. Route shields generally do the trick, but they're just much smaller and easier to miss than BGS's or LGS's, and they require separate signage for the route destinations/mileages. It would be great to see more interstate-style signage (meaning route shield + destination integrated on a single sign panel, à la Washington state) on long-distance US and state routes. To my knowledge, Washington is the only state that uses this style of signage somewhat consistently on non-Interstates, but it would be nice to see it more widely adopted.

As for the UK, despite the lack of route shields, I think their signage for non-motorway junctions is a step above ours in the US for the same reason: the message is typically integrated into a single sign panel rather than appearing piecemeal, so one sign panel can convey a message that would take multiple signs in the US (example).

But of course the reason why the US does this is because it's much cheaper to run off a hundred of each route shield and a thousand arrows and banners and then build the signs up out of those elements, as opposed to having to design four custom signs for every single intersection.

I do prefer the integrated route marker and destination signage, but I'm not sure I prefer it enough to justify the extra costs. Fortunately, though, Nevada has enough money to throw around that we do sometimes get those, and even full-on overhead signage at two-lane road junctions.

[freebrickproductions]

I definitely don't want to spark a war here, but the US guide sign system is fairly reliable and consistent on controlled access roads, but the second you're off that it is... not great.

I'm curious why you say that. I will grant that perhaps some of the destinations chosen are less useful than others, which is mostly because each state is free to come up with its own method of choosing these. (AASHTO only coordinates control cities on Interstate highways.) Some states do this in an ad-hoc manner, while Kansas has a flowchart for doing so which takes settlement size, distance, and political stature (i.e. is it a county seat) into account.

Other than that I'm not entirely sure what weaknesses the US directional sign system has. It's all done in a fairly standard manner (well, outside of New Mexico, but the "welcome to New Mexico" signs are bright yellow so you shouldn't end up there without knowing) so once you've been through a few junctions parsing the information presented should become easy. I suppose you could fault it for emphasizing route numbers above destinations, but to me that is a cultural difference that the signs follow—Americans simply tend to navigate by route number rather than by waypoint.

To be fair, the quality of directional signage on US and state highways (as well as county roads) very much varies a bit on a state-by-state basis. For example, when it comes to two state (or US) highways intersecting at a 4-way intersection in a rural location, here's how a few different states handle it:
[links snipped]

What really stands out is the US's reliance on standalone route shields once off the Interstate system. Route shields generally do the trick, but they're just much smaller and easier to miss than BGS's or LGS's, and they require separate signage for the route destinations/mileages. It would be great to see more interstate-style signage (meaning route shield + destination integrated on a single sign panel, à la Washington state) on long-distance US and state routes. To my knowledge, Washington is the only state that uses this style of signage somewhat consistently on non-Interstates, but it would be nice to see it more widely adopted.

As for the UK, despite the lack of route shields, I think their signage for non-motorway junctions is a step above ours in the US for the same reason: the message is typically integrated into a single sign panel rather than appearing piecemeal, so one sign panel can convey a message that would take multiple signs in the US (example).

But of course the reason why the US does this is because it's much cheaper to run off a hundred of each route shield and a thousand arrows and banners and then build the signs up out of those elements, as opposed to having to design four custom signs for every single intersection.

I do prefer the integrated route marker and destination signage, but I'm not sure I prefer it enough to justify the extra costs. Fortunately, though, Nevada has enough money to throw around that we do sometimes get those, and even full-on overhead signage at two-lane road junctions.

ALDOT's the same way, and is also good at posting signage like this for roundabouts on state highways where two or more intersect:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9847998,-86.5873255,3a,15y,227.51h,93.73t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s8zX7Cetj3XC2cYjQ-9LW3g!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-3.7322359206852838%26panoid%3D8zX7Cetj3XC2cYjQ-9LW3g%26yaw%3D227.5141064736971!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUyMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

[kphoger]

What really stands out is the US's reliance on standalone route shields once off the Interstate system. Route shields generally do the trick, but they're just much smaller and easier to miss than BGS's or LGS's, and they require separate signage for the route destinations/mileages. It would be great to see more interstate-style signage (meaning route shield + destination integrated on a single sign panel ...

But of course the reason why the US does this is because it's much cheaper to run off a hundred of each route shield and a thousand arrows and banners and then build the signs up out of those elements, as opposed to having to design four custom signs for every single intersection.

But I don't see why they still couldn't be combined.

Nebraska already uses a zillion Little Green Signs for off-Interstate route junctions, and also a zillion custom-made D1-2a signs for those same junctions.  Why not combine them?  One sign per approach instead of two?

I'm sure someone with better sign-making skills than I have could design something like this that uses less sheet metal:

[kphoger]

There we go.  How about this?