UK Roads Thread

[webny99]

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.

Yep, you nailed it. The striping has been changed to two lanes but people still drive it like it's three. The lanes are so wide that faster traffic can pass on the inside without fully merging back to single file for oncoming traffic, so there was some pretty wild passing going on both times I drove it; stuff like this (but with regular traffic instead of a slow moving tractor) seemed to be the norm. The locals even mentioned that it was known to be a dangerous stretch.

[english si]

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.

Unsurprisingly the motorway network is focused on the urban area with 17% of the population of England...

And, wow, two east-west routes and a short bypass in an area covering 45% of the UK population (London+SE+East) is really lots compared to. I'll throw in the M27 for another short route.

There's a dearth of E-W motorways, but they are fairly well spread across the country. More so if you add in the expressways.

The only real outliers are places that don't have a motorway connection to anywhere - like East Anglia and most of Wales.

That's my point.

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).

But a US route (and in some states a state route) can be anything from a wide long-distance freeway to a road that no through-traffic should be using. That's the same as A roads - hence why we have motorways and primary routes for through traffic and non-primary routes for local traffic - a distinction that the US is lacking below the interstate level.

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.

It was not originally 3-lanes, opening in 1991, long after suicide lanes were a thing of the past. It has 5m (16'5") lanes, instead of 3.6m lanes (12'), which, even if you shrink the margins, doesn't quite work. Arguably there's just about enough space to put three lanes there if it was one half of the Expressway-grade road it was meant to become part of (one narrow inside lane and a narrow inside margin) - which is what the NIMBYs of Wing believed when rejecting their bypass (having read their complaints), but I think the standard would have been D2 with a full shoulder on the carriageway they'd made out of this existing road just because the tarmac was already there.

Yep, you nailed it. The striping has been changed to two lanes but people still drive it like it's three. The lanes are so wide that faster traffic can pass on the inside without fully merging back to single file for oncoming traffic, so there was some pretty wild passing going on both times I drove it; stuff like this (but with regular traffic instead of a slow moving tractor) seemed to be the norm. The locals even mentioned that it was known to be a dangerous stretch.

I've dealt with it not ever being striped as three lanes, but also people don't drive it like it's three lanes - they drive it like it's four lanes (cars can pass two abreast without crossing the white line, though it's a bit hairy) with speedy drivers hugging that centre line and seeking slower cars to move and hug the edge line, or like it's two lanes with cars in the middle of the lane and not allowing any use of the extra-width to overtake.

Usually they widen the margins a little either side and put wide permissive hatching down the middle when they resurface these WS2 roads - people can still overtake, but they are dissuaded not to. I don't know why Central Beds hasn't done so, especially as that road is notoriously bad.

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.

But that's what the UK is doing using the colour as a function in saying 'this is a main road' and 'this is a local road'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_traffic_signs_in_English-speaking_territories suggests that UK uses different colours to express different functions more than the US (WP rather than AARW as it's an image-intensive page and there's the thumbnail generation issue).

[kphoger]

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.

|vdeane| didn't say that.  You need to fix your quotes.

[Scott5114]

But that's what the UK is doing using the colour as a function in saying 'this is a main road' and 'this is a local road'.

But surely nobody mistakes a motorway for a local road until they see blue signs? And if they don't, the utility of having the signs different colors on different classifications of road is rather limited, isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_traffic_signs_in_English-speaking_territories suggests that UK uses different colours to express different functions more than the US (WP rather than AARW as it's an image-intensive page and there's the thumbnail generation issue).

I will grant that it's nice that the UK uses different colours for mandatory versus prohibitory signage. But then they go and cancel that out by using the same colour scheme for prohibitory signage as they do warning signage!

[freebrickproductions]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_traffic_signs_in_English-speaking_territories suggests that UK uses different colours to express different functions more than the US (WP rather than AARW as it's an image-intensive page and there's the thumbnail generation issue).

I will grant that it's nice that the UK uses different colours for mandatory versus prohibitory signage. But then they go and cancel that out by using the same colour scheme for prohibitory signage as they do warning signage!

I suppose at least warning signage will (almost) always be a triangle while prohibitory signage will (almost) always be a circle.

[english si]

But surely nobody mistakes a motorway for a local road until they see blue signs?

No, but the blue patches on direction signs will point them in the right direction for the main roads when on the local road pretty quickly. They wouldn't even need to read unless there are two different motorways being pointed at by the sign.

I really don't know what your issue is with multi-coloured direction signs is. What is the problem created by having direction signs on motorways being blue and primary routes being green, rather than the default white?

I will grant that it's nice that the UK uses different colours for mandatory versus prohibitory signage. But then they go and cancel that out by using the same colour scheme for prohibitory signage as they do warning signage!

But then the US uses black text on white rectangles for anything that isn't a warning (yellow), STOP (red), or direction (green) sign. Manditory, prohibitive, informational, etc, etc - all one colour and shape.

Could the UK do better with the colours, perhaps (yellow in the warning sign triangles, like the Nordic countries?). But the point is the comparison with the US.

You need to fix your quotes.

I believe I've done that.

[Scott5114]

But surely nobody mistakes a motorway for a local road until they see blue signs?

No, but the blue patches on direction signs will point them in the right direction for the main roads when on the local road pretty quickly. They wouldn't even need to read unless there are two different motorways being pointed at by the sign.

I really don't know what your issue is with multi-coloured direction signs is. What is the problem created by having direction signs on motorways being blue and primary routes being green, rather than the default white?

Having the signs be colour-coded according to function means you can filter out signs which aren't relevant to you. Suppose I've eaten and filled the car with petrol before setting out on my trip, well, I can ignore every single blue sign, since those are about services which I won't be needing. If I know where I'm going I can ignore the green and brown ones too because those are directional. Really the only signs I need to always pay attention to are red, white, yellow, and orange if it's around. (I mean, I personally do look at every single sign, but that's because I like signs, not because I have to!)

Whereas in the UK I get the impression that you kind of have to give every sign put before you a once-over to decide whether it was worth your time to actually look at it or not!

But then the US uses black text on white rectangles for anything that isn't a warning (yellow), STOP (red), or direction (green) sign. Manditory, prohibitive, informational, etc, etc - all one colour and shape.

Mandatory and prohibitive are black-on-white (and I do think it would be nice to distinguish between those two, perhaps by having one be white-on-black, but the ship sailed on that so long ago I don't expect it will ever be changed). Informational (such as river names, municipality boundaries, and the like) is white-on-green—I suppose you could argue that maybe it should be differentiated from the signage telling you "Whateverton →" but the general idea of "if you know where you are you don't need green signs" still holds—if you know how to get to Whateverton without the signs you probably know (or don't care) what river that was you just crossed.

[kphoger]

But then the US uses black text on white rectangles for anything that isn't a warning (yellow), STOP (red), or direction (green) sign. Manditory, prohibitive, informational, etc, etc - all one colour and shape.

wut

Which informational signs in the USA are black-on-white rectangles?

Black on white rectangle = regulatory (except for STOP and YIELD, which are red and have unique shapes)

White on green/blue/brown rectangle = informational guide/services/recreation

Black on yellow diamond = warning (except for school crossings, which are pentagons) (and railroad crossbucks)

That's pretty much it, except for construction signage and "incident" signage and that kind of thing.