I doubt Clearview will be rescinded in the US. Revised usage, most likely, but not rescinded.
FHWA has promised it will be, but so far nothing official has appeared. Iowa DOT has already reverted to Series E Modified of its own accord.
As for Canada, I imagine that one or more provinces would eventually follow the US in a Clearview phaseout, but it isn't really any easier to predict the Canadian response than it is to guess the form a US phaseout would take. This is partly because the US federal
MUTCD no longer reflects best design practice and thus does not present a compelling model for the Canadian provinces.
* In the 2003
MUTCD agencies were given permission to use mixed-case FHWA alphabet series on all guide signs, including conventional-road guide signs. Previously, the
MUTCD had shown mixed-case Series E Modified only for expressways and freeways and all-uppercase legend for conventional-road guide signs, but the verbiage allowed the use of mixed-case legend on conventional-road guide signs as long as it was Series E Modified, and this option was extensively exercised in California, Washington, and several other states. Mixed-case versions of the FHWA alphabets other than Series E Modified were also released. Unit legibility information has long been available for all-uppercase Series B, C, D, and E and for mixed-case Series E Modified, but is not (to my knowledge) available in a public source anywhere for the new mixed-case alphabets. Notwithstanding this lack, the 2009
MUTCD now
requires agencies to use mixed-case legend for all guide signing, including on conventional roads.
* In spite of FHWA's stated intention to rescind the Clearview interim approval, Clearview 5-W and 5-W-R continue to be positioned as head-to-head replacements for Series E Modified. FHWA has alleged that the other Clearview series offer inferior legibility to their FHWA Series counterparts, but since unit legibility data has not been published for the thinner typefaces in either family, it is difficult to verify whether this is true or say how great the legibility gap is.
These factors mean that a Canadian province concerned about maximizing legibility of conventional-road guide signs cannot really use a recent edition of the US federal
MUTCD (as opposed to, say, the 1988 or Millennium editions) as a starting point. From an engineering point of view, the equivalent guidance in California or Washington state is much better.
My personal guess is that Clearview will continue to be used in Canadian provinces that use thinner typefaces on conventional-road guide signs and have no history of designing around unit legibility. British Columbia is the classic case in point. Clearview is almost certainly more legible than the BC Font (actually a typeface family) that was previously used, and although BC did use mixed-case versions of the thinner FHWA Series for conventional-road guide signing shortly before its own Clearview conversion, inertia favors continued use of Clearview.
Meanwhile, in other Canadian provinces where Series E Modified was previously used everywhere (as in California and Washington), such as Alberta, I would expect reversion to be seriously considered. Clearview 5-W and Clearview 5-W-R are the drop-in substitutes and are pretty equal to Series E Modified in unit legibility, but the issues with the digits would tell, as well as the fact that Clearview is in decline in North America overall even if the rate of abandonment proves to be much slower in Canada than in the US.
It is hard to tell how the Big Two--Ontario and Québec--would react. For Québec I would expect reversion to be quite simple since, as far as I am aware, it has used Clearview only for primary destination legend on green-background
autoroute guide signs, with the FHWA series continuing as the preferred type family for blue- and brown-background signs as well as green-background conventional-road guide signs.
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Topic: If Interim use of Clearview is Rescinded, do you think Canada will follow suit? (Read 11831 times)