What if we actually designed signage for roads that have trucks on them?

[Michael in Philly]

Okay, one pet peeve of mine is not being able to see signs that are by the side of the road because the right lane is full of trucks that are taller than said signs, and I'm in the left.

Now, it's one thing when the sign is just listing services at the next exit, but it's another thing altogether when it's a fricking VMS reading "43 south/894 west use 2 right lanes" and you're in the left-hand lane, out of four, and you only see it at the next-to-last second.

I know some European countries duplicate signs on each side of the road (Like this, and others in that set, from Belgium:  https://picasaweb.google.com/101577421687806270065/E40Oost#5614779525529932466 ).  And there's always the possibility of mounting them overhead.

Anyone else find this a problem?  And anyone in the business have any thoughts?

EDIT:  link to European example added.

[Ian]

Georgia likes to install their signs on tall butterfly gantries like seen here to prevent that problem:

[J N Winkler]

Okay, one pet peeve of mine is not being able to see signs that are by the side of the road because the right lane is full of trucks that are taller than said signs, and I'm in the left.

Now, it's one thing when the sign is just listing services at the next exit, but it's another thing altogether when it's a fricking VMS reading "43 south/894 west use 2 right lanes" and you're in the left-hand lane, out of four, and you only see it at the next-to-last second.

I know some European countries duplicate signs on each side of the road (Like this, and others in that set, from Belgium:  https://picasaweb.google.com/101577421687806270065/E40Oost#5614779525529932466 ).  And there's always the possibility of mounting them overhead.

Anyone else find this a problem?  And anyone in the business have any thoughts?

It is a problem and generally recognized as such by the traffic engineering community.  However, it tends to be much less of a problem in the US than elsewhere because our design standards allow for cantilever mounting of fixed permanent guide signs.  In Britain, for example, on motorways this type of mounting is an option only for VMS signs, so where permanent signs are concerned, there is a large gulf between a ground-mounted sign which can be put up for about £5,000 and a full-width overhead sign gantry costing about £90,000.  In the US a cantilever sign (including structure) costs about $30,000.

In principle it is possible to use economic analysis to develop warrants for provision of overhead signing which take the average costs of overhead sign structures and traffic volumes, including the percentages of large trucks, as the input variables.  I am not sure this has been done, however.

Structural signing will largely eliminate obscuration by large trucks, but it is far more expensive than simple sign panel replacement and so is hard to program within existing budget development processes unless they already make specific allowances for it.  The best I can suggest is to identify a corridor where this problem bothers you on a regular basis and start writing letters to the owning agency and its oversight bodies within the legislature.

[Michael in Philly]

^^Of course, if I used I-94 south of Milwaukee on a regular basis, I'd know which lane I needed to be in for 43/894....  I think this is, by definition, a problem that's going to affect infrequent users of any given stretch.  I suppose, in this example, the Wisconsin legislature would need to hear from people from Madison or Green Bay who are passing through on their way home from Chicago

[hbelkins]

Pre-GPS days, I actually missed an exit because of this. It was on I-81 northbound in Tennessee. They only sign exits one mile prior to the actual interchange, and I didn't see the sign because of trucks in the right lane that I was passing in the left lane. By the time I got to the interchange I wanted, I could see the sign but I was unable to get over in the right lane in time to take the exit.

My understanding is that Ohio is erecting all signs on roads it widens on overhead structures, like so:

[J N Winkler]

Before starting a letter-writing campaign, it always helps to check that there is nothing already in place which is designed to solve the problem, and also that the scene neither has been nor is about to be rearranged by construction.

The specific scenario you describe sounds like I-43/I-94 southbound approaching the Mitchell Interchange (I-94/I-43/I-894 wye and eastern terminus of I-894).  StreetView shows overhead signing already present (including full-width gantries), although the signing is a bit non-MUTCD and offbeat:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Milw,+WI&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Milwaukee,+Wisconsin&ll=42.965949,-87.930266&spn=0.004082,0.009645&t=m&z=17&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=42.965949,-87.930266&panoid=DAHqkaB4UuJjCtUNYSW8Eg&cbp=12,255.23,,0,18.83

However, there are covered-up orange DETOUR signs as well as color patches on the guide signs themselves which look like they are associated with a color-coded detour scheme.

I am going to take a wild guess:  construction was going on when you passed through and the "I-43 south/I-894 west use 2 right lanes" VMS you saw was actually a trailer-mounted flip-disc CMS which had been put in place to cover a temporary absence of overhead sign panels.

(Having been almost taken through a temporary lane drop at unsafe speed through my inability to read a badly sited and too-small ground-mounted sign warning me of it, I tend to feel that overhead signing should be used more extensively in workzones, but I don't feel I have much of a case in terms of the published design standards.)

[Michael in Philly]

Close:  94 "west"-bound (really north).  The road was crowded and I guessed - incorrectly - 43/894 would be the left fork.
And yes, it's for construction, but that's no excuse, in my opinion:  it's not my fault that I happened to be there during construction.  (There are overhead VMSs all the way to the Illinois line, with things like travel times to various points.  I don't know how close they are to the decision point, but maybe one of them could be used to guide people.)

[J N Winkler]

Close:  94 "west"-bound (really north).  The road was crowded and I guessed - incorrectly - 43/894 would be the left fork.

StreetView shows it thus:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Milwaukee&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Milwaukee,+Wisconsin&ll=42.960129,-87.934098&spn=0.008103,0.01929&t=m&z=16&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=42.960379,-87.934266&panoid=-o2i3E65gHtwKC4PpLE4YA&cbp=12,9.08,,0,-2.87

And yes, it's for construction, but that's no excuse, in my opinion:  it's not my fault that I happened to be there during construction.  (There are overhead VMSs all the way to the Illinois line, with things like travel times to various points.  I don't know how close they are to the decision point, but maybe one of them could be used to guide people.)

I tend to agree but don't know enough about what they are doing at the Mitchell Interchange to speak concretely about what might have been possible.  In this kind of situation I would incline toward using orange-background guide signs mounted to gantries that have the room to spare, but I don't know if what you encountered was a long-term detour or highly temporary.  There is also the question of how you guide the traffic when you are hoisting the orange-background signs into place.  I have long suspected that much of the confusion caused by temporary traffic control occurs when the layout is being assembled under traffic.

[vtk]

I believe OhioDOT's standard for many years has been to use ground-mounted guide signage only when there are 2 or fewer lanes (in that direction, of course).  More lanes calls for cantilevered signage, or a full bridge with a pull-through when the upcoming exit is a lane drop.

I can't say I've ever seen specific service signs on a cantilever or bridge, though.  Maybe they should do that when there are 4 or more lanes...