yet another topic on California freeway signing practices

[J N Winkler]

I have had a quick look through the "witching directory" where I keep all Caltrans sign design and sign layout sheets I have which show pattern-accurate sign designs.  (It has 1387 files at the moment, the oldest dating from 2000 while the newest date from last Monday.)  It seems that the latest Caltrans plan sheets without taller initial letter in cardinal direction words have plans approval dates in January 2009, while the oldest plan sheets with taller initial letter have dates in March 2009.  So the changeover probably occurred in or around February 2009.  (There might have been variation in timing between districts, but this is consistent with the plan sheets I have for Districts 7 and 12.)

The designers for 12-071624 (which includes the exit direction sign on which Myosh_tino's drawing is based) must have had advance notice of the change in treatment for dropped lanes.  There are actually two copies of the signing plans in the bidding document distribution for this contract:  one in the TIFF plan sheets themselves, and the other as plotted PDF in the "informational handout" which Caltrans now puts online (probably to save the duty seniors in the districts the chore of distributing them to interested contractors) in the proposals directory.  The TIFF signing plans have plans approval dates of September 21, 2009, while the PDF signing plans are undated but are clearly earlier versions which were sent to Caltrans for review.  The earlier review plans show the dropped lane arrows on the yellow strip panel only for the advance guide sign; the exit direction sign (source for Myosh_tino's drawing) has the traditional treatment, with all three arrows on green while "ONLY" appears on yellow between the two right arrows.  Moreover, the exit direction sign version of W61 is at its formerly standard 20" height on these earlier review plans, as opposed to 26" in the approved final plans.

The review plans don't have dimensions for the advance guide sign version of W61, so it's not possible to do a direct comparison, but my eyeball impression is that it is also higher in the final plans--28" for the two dropped lanes on the Exit 21 advance guide signs as opposed to perhaps 20" in the review plans.  The final plans do retain the 20" height for "EXIT ONLY" with downward-pointing arrow for advance guide signs leading to simple lane drops.

It will indeed be interesting to see if the signs are fabricated as drawn.  As an aside, this is a consultant-designed project, which is fairly unusual for Caltrans because of the long-standing rule that construction plans for work on the California state highway system have to be sealed by Caltrans PEs, unless the work is supervised by a local agency or a regional measure agency.  PS&E compilation for this project was supervised by OCTA, but Caltrans is letting the contract and probably supervising construction, so I'm not sure what way they are taking around the sealing requirement.

[agentsteel53]

the oldest dating from 2000

do you know anywhere that you can get older ones?  Especially any from before these historical time points:

April, 1973 - last porcelain overhead signs
mid-1963 - last porcelain signs mounted on poles by the side of the road
mid-1958 - first green signs (they were *installing* black ones as late as 1961, but who knows when they made them)
October, 1950 - first federal-font overhead guide signs
sometime in 1949 - first black overhead guide signs
sometime before 1947 - first overhead guide signs of any kind
February, 1929 - switch from diamond-shaped to white rectangle Auto Club guide signs
May, 1913 - first porcelain auto club signs
1906 - first auto club signs (wood, none known to survive)

[J N Winkler]

Caltrans didn't really do pattern-accurate sign design sheets in construction plans sets on a large scale until 2004, when it changed over to contractor-furnished permanent signing (i.e., started procuring permanent signs in the same way as well over 40 other states).  Before that time, the system worked differently.  The construction plans sets contained sign layout plans (to show sign location) and maybe some sign elevation and sign design sheets to show the outer dimensions of each panel and the relation of the panel to lanes on the roadway.  It was then the contractor's responsibility to say "I am ready to install signs" to the Caltrans RE supervising the project, who would issue Sign Installation Orders (SIOs) to a separate contractor holding one of the statewide signs contracts.  That contractor would then fabricate the signs as shown in the SIOs and ship them to a Caltrans warehouse, where the project contractor would pick them up and install them.

(The system was actually even more complicated than this in reality, but this is the gist--no need to get into all the additional DAS/OBM forms that had to be filed . . .)

Bottom line:  Caltrans construction plans sets have had signing plans from the early 1950's, but in the overwhelmingly vast majority of cases, they were never pattern-accurate.

I have been told that at the time contractor-furnished signs were introduced, SIOs were already pattern-accurate (each SIO has to contain a scaled-down drawing of the sign) and had been for some time.  So the thing I would really like to do is to get a complete set of historical SIOs from all of the Caltrans districts.  I understand that District 7 has put together an electronic SIO database, but I don't know if the contents of this database can be exported and, say, burned to a DVD.  I have had no luck getting in touch with anyone at District 7 who might be able to explain to me how it works.

It is possible to get construction plans for old Caltrans projects.  One way is to do public records requests with the individual Caltrans districts (access to project as-builts is administered at the district level, so it is a waste of time to go to Caltrans HQ).  Another way is to investigate what may be available through local agency "engineering vaults."  The Los Angeles (city) Bureau of Engineering has a quite good online engineering vault which has aperture card scans for the original construction contracts for a good portion of the freeway network within LA city, including well-known features like the Four Level and the I-10/I-405 interchange near Santa Monica.  But this type of documentation is not very fruitful in terms of pattern-accurate signing, alas.

[myosh_tino]

I have had a quick look through the "witching directory" where I keep all Caltrans sign design and sign layout sheets I have which show pattern-accurate sign designs.  (It has 1387 files at the moment, the oldest dating from 2000 while the newest date from last Monday.)  It seems that the latest Caltrans plan sheets without taller initial letter in cardinal direction words have plans approval dates in January 2009, while the oldest plan sheets with taller initial letter have dates in March 2009.  So the changeover probably occurred in or around February 2009.  (There might have been variation in timing between districts, but this is consistent with the plan sheets I have for Districts 7 and 12.)

Would it be safe to say that none of the signs in the planning sheets dated March 2009 and later have actually been fabricated and installed?  If you think my assumption is incorrect, can you post a partial list of projects so someone from southern California can go out to see if the new signs are installed and whether they match the plans or not.

Edit: My typing sucks right now... too many typos 

[agentsteel53]

I understand that District 7 has put together an electronic SIO database, but I don't know if the contents of this database can be exported and, say, burned to a DVD.  I have had no luck getting in touch with anyone at District 7 who might be able to explain to me how it works.

this would be quite the resource, since District 7 pretty much led the way as far as freeway signage was concerned.  Though I would assume it was the auto clubs that did the freeway signage before 1947, because that is the year the Division of Highways took over.  Which leads to a perfectly valid question: were there even overhead guide signs before 1947?  If the Pennsylvania Turnpike is any indicator, the Arroyo Seco Parkway (opened 1940) would have had signs simply by the side of the road. 

unfortunately, the oldest signs on the Arroyo Seco date to 1960, but the gantries they are housed on are significantly older, and may be as old as the first time they ever elevated signs (1940? 1947?) - maybe it's time someone walked up to one of those gantries and looked for a date stamp on the pole!

in any case, bits are bits, and if the data is stored on a computer, then it is certainly possible to send it along via the internet, DVD, or any other means of distribution...

[J N Winkler]

Would it be safe to say that none of the signs in the planning sheets dated March 2009 and later have actually been fabricated and installed?  If you think my assumption is incorrect, can you post a partial list of projects so someone from southern California can go out to see if the new signs are installed and whether they match the plans or not.

Short answer:  no, I don't think that assumption would be safe, since I think some of the signs may already have been installed.  I would suggest starting by checking the Arroyo Seco Parkway.  It was supposed to have received new signs as part of Caltrans contract 07-4T0304:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/oe/project_ads_addenda/07/07-4T0304/

Office Engineer says the project was awarded on June 24, 2009, and for a project that small (the plans had only 53 sheets), notice to proceed will have been issued almost immediately.  So there are bound to be new signs on the Arroyo Seco by now.

Unfortunately, the oldest signs on the Arroyo Seco date to 1960, but the gantries they are housed on are significantly older, and may be as old as the first time they ever elevated signs (1940? 1947?) - maybe it's time someone walked up to one of those gantries and looked for a date stamp on the pole!

It is.  I think I have seen (but cannot at the moment put my finger on where) photos showing signing on the Arroyo Seco before 1960--specifically, one of the "Avenue" exits (I think Avenue 43) in all-uppercase with white letters on black background.  All-uppercase in that timeframe would tend to imply ground mounting, but I can't remember whether they were ground-mounted or not . . .

in any case, bits are bits, and if the data is stored on a computer, then it is certainly possible to send it along via the internet, DVD, or any other means of distribution...

It always is, at least in theory.  I tend to worry more about whether the interface will allow whoever has to fulfil a request for the SIOs to get them out of the system without having to spend a lot of time on the task.  Most database systems in government are designed so that low-level employees don't have the top-level access required to go to the database files directly and copy them for dispatch to third parties.  As a general rule of thumb, whenever you ask for information from a government agency through an open records request, you become liable for the staff time it takes to retrieve the data.  This is one reason I usually try to work online archives and other methods for obtaining passive access to sign designs, when they are available.

[myosh_tino]

Would it be safe to say that none of the signs in the planning sheets dated March 2009 and later have actually been fabricated and installed?  If you think my assumption is incorrect, can you post a partial list of projects so someone from southern California can go out to see if the new signs are installed and whether they match the plans or not.

Short answer:  no, I don't think that assumption would be safe, since I think some of the signs may already have been installed.  I would suggest starting by checking the Arroyo Seco Parkway.  It was supposed to have received new signs as part of Caltrans contract 07-4T0304:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/oe/project_ads_addenda/07/07-4T0304/

Office Engineer says the project was awarded on June 24, 2009, and for a project that small (the plans had only 53 sheets), notice to proceed will have been issued almost immediately.  So there are bound to be new signs on the Arroyo Seco by now.

I stand corrected then.  Is there anyone from the Los Angeles area that can go out to see if the new signs have been installed?  Some pictures would be helpful too.

As an aside, I went through the signing plans you linked to and I noticed that while the first letter of the cardinal direction is bigger, the rest of the cardinal direction was centered vertically relative to the first letter instead of being "bottom aligned".

[agentsteel53]

It is.  I think I have seen (but cannot at the moment put my finger on where) photos showing signing on the Arroyo Seco before 1960--specifically, one of the "Avenue" exits (I think Avenue 43) in all-uppercase with white letters on black background.  All-uppercase in that timeframe would tend to imply ground mounting, but I can't remember whether they were ground-mounted or not . . .

I would imagine it would be a ground-mounted sign with plastic reflectors in the all-caps, placed on two pickets located one at each side of the sign.  It would have something like "1 mile" or "1/2 mile" and therefore be used as an advance marker, in conjunction with an elevated gore point sign in mixed case, with underlighting and no reflectors.

The black ground-mounted signs were introduced in 1932, and originally had glass cateyes on a custom font.  I believe they switched to the standard MUTCD font sometime between 1946 and 1948, and I know for a fact they switched to plastic reflectors in 1945 after the war.  For a while, the black signs were used in gore points as well.

The question then becomes - when did they use *white* signs for freeway use?  I have this photo of a white sign in a context that would surely imply a black sign should be used:



someone more familiar than I am with the Four-Level Interchange can tell me if that is a gore-point sign, or an advance junction sign.  It has the Division of Highways logo, dating it to 1947 or later.  The shields are 1949 spec.

I had always thought that high-speed interchanges had used black signs with reflectors, for good night visibility, but apparently this contradicts that notion.  I also have two examples of overhead butterfly gantries with white signs: one is a 1949 photo of US-101 at Santa Rosa, and the other one is the Burlingame exit on bypass 101 southbound (photo is 1965 but the gantry has gotta be much older).

So, in some contexts, it seems freeways got white signs, but I have no idea what that context is.  I'm tempted to say "well-lit junctions", but then why the reflectorized shields at the Four-Level?  The 1939 and 1949 California signing manuals specify no-reflector shields for city intersections with good municipal lighting - perhaps also they specified no-reflector white guide signs, and whoever installed this gantry at the Four-Level used the wrong shields?

[agentsteel53]

to throw another wrench into the "white sign vs. black sign" discussion, I have a single 1956 photo of a black sign that was used in what was clearly a white-sign context: bear 49 northbound at US-50 in Placerville (junction controlled by stop signs), with a non-reflectorized black guide sign with 4" FHWA 1948 Series C letters - basically the photo-inverse of a very standard white guide sign.  I think my original title for the file was "why the f!&# is this sign black!?!?" though now I have it titled something more standard, except I still have it filed in my "white guide signs" folder, just because.

[agentsteel53]

in general, California has had, since the 1940s, three classifications of guide signs: low-speed, high-speed overhead, and high-speed side-of-the-road, each with their own sets of specs.

One question regarding the low-speed signs is: when did they switch over from white to green signs, and also when did they stop using porcelain?  The black signs were switched to green in 1958, to go with federal standards, and they were porcelain until 1963 for the side-of-road signs and 1973 for the overheads.

In general, many signs were changed from porcelain to aluminum between 1957 and 1953 gradually - US and state route shields were switched in 1957, interstates around 1958 or 1959, various small white signs like "pedestrian undercrossing" as late as 1965... speed limit signs in 1962 or so when they changed format from SPEED LIMIT/X/MILES to the federal standard SPEED/LIMIT/X.

Unfortunately, I have never seen a low-speed guide sign from between 1957 and 1963.

I've seen a 1954 which was white, had no separator bars between the various directions to destinations, and the Cal Division of Highways logo.  In 1955 or 1956 they added the separator bars and kept the logo.  Then in the middle of 1956 is when they got rid of the logo on all signs - this I know for a fact.  I've seen a 1957 with separator bars and no logo.  Still porcelain.  I've seen a "drinking fountain 200 feet" porcelain sign from 1961 but that may not be a standard that was changed to green - it may have been in the same class as the "pedestrian undercrossing" sign.

then, for 1963, I've seen a green sign, not porcelain, with engineer grade white over non-reflective green.  Must've been opaque green ink screen-printed in the negative space over a white engineer-grade background. 

So between 1957 and 1963, I have no idea... would be interesting to see a green sign from, say, 1960.

[J N Winkler]

It was panels only--for only $250,000 (total) they are not going to be able to replace any of the sign structures.  (BTW, this snippet probably should be moved over to the split thread.)

moved!

[J N Winkler]

The question then becomes - when did they use *white* signs for freeway use?  I have this photo of a white sign in a context that would surely imply a black sign should be used:



someone more familiar than I am with the Four-Level Interchange can tell me if that is a gore-point sign, or an advance junction sign.  It has the Division of Highways logo, dating it to 1947 or later.  The shields are 1949 spec.

The Four Level is also finished and the Hollywood Freeway (top level) also appears to be open to traffic, which would date it later than 1953.  This looks like the assembly that was mounted at the gore where traffic leaving the northbound Harbor Freeway split into streams for the Hollywood Freeway (on the left) and the Santa Ana Freeway (on the right).

I had always thought that high-speed interchanges had used black signs with reflectors, for good night visibility, but apparently this contradicts that notion.

Ground mounting implied no lighting, so all-uppercase Series E Modified (to accommodate reflectors) was used for black ground-mounted freeway guide signs--initially it was just the overhead guide signs which got white mixed-case legend on black background with external lighting.  Is it possible the Four Level assembly was reflectorized using Scotchlite or similar?

I also have two examples of overhead butterfly gantries with white signs: one is a 1949 photo of US-101 at Santa Rosa, and the other one is the Burlingame exit on bypass 101 southbound (photo is 1965 but the gantry has gotta be much older).

There were multiple examples of white-background overhead guide signs on US 101 in District 7 in the late 1940's.  Some of them had typefaces different from the modern FHWA alphabet series, which were introduced in 1945.

So, in some contexts, it seems freeways got white signs, but I have no idea what that context is.

I am not sure there was a definite context.  I think practice was still evolving.

[agentsteel53]

The Four Level is also finished and the Hollywood Freeway (top level) also appears to be open to traffic, which would date it later than 1953.  This looks like the assembly that was mounted at the gore where traffic leaving the northbound Harbor Freeway split into streams for the Hollywood Freeway (on the left) and the Santa Ana Freeway (on the right).

gotcha - the gore point location makes sense given the arrow use.  

Here is another example I found of a white sign in a similar context.  Had forgotten about this one.



compare to this sign... black sign with no discrete reflectors on the shields.  



That sign *may* have reflective sheeting... more on that topic later.

The only example of this style I had seen - though by this time they were generally using either abstract shields (US only, no state name) or outline shields.  The switch occurred sometime in the mid-50s.



US-only shields, and the old 1932 font for DEATH VALLEY, presumably with plastic reflectors to go with the Division of Highways logo.  Sign assembly dates to 1947-1949 due to the narrow font on the shields.

Ground mounting implied no lighting, so all-uppercase Series E Modified (to accommodate reflectors) was used for black ground-mounted freeway guide signs--

Correct - with regular E for the white ones.  The switch from the 1932 font (which appears to be the same thickness for both positive and negative contrast signs) occured sometime around 1945-48.  1948 is when the federal fonts were made a standard, but they were first published in 1945.  I have seen a sign (it's right behind me where I'm sitting, actually!) from 1946 that says "CAUTION - OPEN STOCK RANGE" that uses standard Series D, so California was definitely an early adopter.

I do not know when they switched to mixed-case for the side-mounted signs, but 1958 is the latest, as I have a picture of a sign with "Junction" spelled out over a 395 shield, and that had mixed case EM.

initially it was just the overhead guide signs which got white mixed-case legend on black background with external lighting.  Is it possible the Four Level assembly was reflectorized using Scotchlite or similar?

I have my doubts.  Other than an experimental run of shields in 1948-1949, the earliest Scotchlite signage I have ever seen from California is 1957.  Again, shields.  



that is an example of one of the 1948 experimental shields.  That is one of the better surviving examples - a lot of them very quickly faded, and under various conditions of retroreflectivity the shields were rendered completely illegible, or "inverted".  I've seen one such experimental shield with a 1949 stamp, and it looks like after that experiment is when they devised the wider font, and went back to Stimsonite reflectors on porcelain.  

(Interestingly, the experimental shields were all recycled (sandblasted and resurfaced) 1930s Auto Club shields - I've seen one with a 1934, and one with a 1936 stamp, that they did not obliterate and restamp in 1948-49!)

As I was saying about the black guide sign that *may* have reflective sheeting on the shields?  The reason I say that is because the shields are the same spec (all round FHWA fonts, closely spaced letters "US") as on the independently mounted shields done in that experimental run.  Who knows, they may have tried a guide sign or two - all I've seen and confirmed with my own eyes is shields.

There were multiple examples of white-background overhead guide signs on US 101 in District 7 in the late 1940's.  Some of them had typefaces different from the modern FHWA alphabet series, which were introduced in 1945.

I wish I had found photos of this at the Caltrans library, but I did not.  I checked the 101/7 folder - especially the Santa Ana freeway, which had major sections built by 1947.  I did find several *black* signs with the 1949-1950 custom font, but no white sign photos; certainly none with custom font.  The only two white sign overhead gantries I found are the two Norcal examples I mentioned.

I am not sure there was a definite context.  I think practice was still evolving.

yes, very likely - I do wonder though if the side-of-the-road white signs were used in more urban contexts, like the Four-Level and the other junction I just posted, and the black ones less well-lit ... and as for the overheads, since they were under- or over-lit, the earliest ones were white and then the switch to black came sometime around 1949.  

The implication is, then, that the reflectorized shields at the Four-Level were installed in error.  Here's an example of an urban environment with non-reflective shields.

www.aaroads.com/shields/img/CA/CA19550662i1.jpg

note the two banks of stand-alone shields, including the nifty two-digit-wide 101 shield.  I am quite sure that they do not have reflectors, and I know that they are the pre-1956 (as early as 1952?) spec with the Series E numbers and the logo, as opposed to the 1956 spec with D numbers, and no logo, or the 1957 spec with reflective sheeting on aluminum.

[J N Winkler]

in general, California has had, since the 1940s, three classifications of guide signs: low-speed, high-speed overhead, and high-speed side-of-the-road, each with their own sets of specs.

"Low speed" = "conventional road" in standard terminology.

One question regarding the low-speed signs is: when did they switch over from white to green signs, and also when did they stop using porcelain?  The black signs were switched to green in 1958, to go with federal standards, and they were porcelain until 1963 for the side-of-road signs and 1973 for the overheads.

I have obsoleted sign specs for white-background conventional-road guide signs.  They all went to green background with reflectorized foreground elements after 1958, but not all in one go (I think most of them changed around 1960).  The green background became reflective too, but this was a later development in the 1960's, and was probably optional since there are many OCB signs which are manifestly newer than that.  White background with retroreflective sheeting and black background with button reflectors (either embedded or demountable) were co-existing options for many of these sign codes, as was all-uppercase versus mixed-case.  In the late 1950's/early 1960's the option to "underline" (i.e., provide ruled lines between lines of legend for destinations in different directions) was added, probably in response to Slade Hurlbert's research into sign comprehension.

The position may have changed since the early 2000's, but for decades--well into the 1990's--Caltrans kept all-uppercase conventional-road guide sign specs on the books.  All-uppercase is the norm for guide signing on conventional roads in other states, but in California it has been deprecated since at least the early 1970's.  It is my understanding that the all-uppercase conventional-road G-series specs were kept around for the benefit of counties and local agencies which wanted to use them on low-volume roads.  They were not considered suitable for state highways.

An interesting question is when OCB first started to be used.  Early 1960's, perhaps?

Unfortunately, I have never seen a low-speed guide sign from between 1957 and 1963.

I have (accompanying Hurlbert's underlining article, which I think appeared in Proceedings of the Highway Research Board sometime in the early 1960's).  It was white-background, accompanied with a white "bear" shield, and had no underlining.  Unfortunately I don't have a digital camera copy of the article--WSU (where I found it) dumped its whole collection of PHRB before I could get to it.

then, for 1963, I've seen a green sign, not porcelain, with engineer grade white over non-reflective green.  Must've been opaque green ink screen-printed in the negative space over a white engineer-grade background.

I think that is unlikely.  I think the background was opaque to begin with and the foreground elements were probably cut out of white retroreflective sheeting.  I have never known Caltrans to use screen processes for any of its guide signs.

[Scott5114]

Caltrans didn't really do pattern-accurate sign design sheets in construction plans sets on a large scale until 2004, when it changed over to contractor-furnished permanent signing (i.e., started procuring permanent signs in the same way as well over 40 other states).  Before that time, the system worked differently.  The construction plans sets contained sign layout plans (to show sign location) and maybe some sign elevation and sign design sheets to show the outer dimensions of each panel and the relation of the panel to lanes on the roadway.  It was then the contractor's responsibility to say "I am ready to install signs" to the Caltrans RE supervising the project, who would issue Sign Installation Orders (SIOs) to a separate contractor holding one of the statewide signs contracts.  That contractor would then fabricate the signs as shown in the SIOs and ship them to a Caltrans warehouse, where the project contractor would pick them up and install them.

(The system was actually even more complicated than this in reality, but this is the gist--no need to get into all the additional DAS/OBM forms that had to be filed . . .)

That system actually makes much more sense to me, in a different sort of way, than what most states do now (have the contractor redoing the road furnish and install the signs). If one contractor is responsible for creating all signage in a given state, they can ensure standards of consistency from sign to sign.

In Oklahoma, there are stretches of freeway with radically different sign layout philosophies within the space of a few miles–witness I-35 from MP 104 to MP 116 or so as an example. Exit 104 matches the signs from the contract in the early 2000s that replaced all the button copy on the south half of I-35. These signs are a light green color and use Type B arrows (as often seen in TX and CA) extensively. At Exit 106, the signs from that contract were replaced when a different contractor rebuilt that interchange at about the same time Riverwind Casino was being built and have massive legends with Type A arrows. Exit 108AB and 109 go back to the southern OK signage. 110 through 114 are currently a hodgepodge of the southern OK signage and construction signage; we will likely get some sort of completely different signage style by the time the project in this area is completed. Exit 110 was the farthest north that southern OK contract got; before the construction Exit 114 was button copy, and then Exit 116 has some completely different reflective setup. One sign at Exit 116 was replaced with a one-off Clearview replacement, as well. About the only thing that all the signs have in common in this stretch is that they are all green and white and made of metal...

Perhaps the best way of doing it is having the DOT sign shop furnish all signs and have the contractor install them. That would cut out a lot of the bureaucracy and still keep the signs consistent.

[J N Winkler]

Caltrans' page on contractor-furnished signs has a training PowerPoint presentation which goes into some of the rationales for adopting this procurement method for permanent signs:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/traffops/signtech/signdel/contractorfurnished.htm

Essentially, procuring large guide signs through statewide contracts has the potential to lead to problems of scale and contract enforcement.  The scale of operations which allows a sign fabricator to provide signs at a low cost is not necessarily the same, and I would expect is probably much smaller, than the scale required to bid for a statewide contract in a state like California with over 30 million people and 5,000 centerline miles of freeway.  For sign contracts that large, you can expect bids only from the "big players," who will know they have you over a barrel.  To an extent Caltrans got around this problem by having separate statewide signs contracts for various substrate types and by sticking to lower-performing but more durable forms of sign construction, which reduced the volume of signs that had to be installed in any given year.

It is my theory (for which I have no direct proof) that Caltrans HQ Traffic Branch decided that the old method of procurement through statewide contracts was unsustainable when it realized that the requirement for retroreflective backgrounds meant a radical increase in the sign square footage Caltrans would have to buy annually.  If the contractors furnish the signs themselves, then it becomes the responsibility of each contractor to find a fabricator who can manufacture the signs as detailed in the contract documents, and this allows Caltrans to escape the sole-source problem.

Moreover, the old system led to frictional losses since Caltrans had the responsibility of warehousing the signs until the contractor was ready to install them.  It also meant that if the project contract had a completion deadline, but the signs contractor was late supplying the signs to Caltrans or Caltrans was late making the signs available to the project contractor, and the latter missed the project completion deadline as a result, he could escape penalty by attributing the delay to Caltrans' failure to act on time.  Making the contractor responsible for furnishing the signs removes Caltrans from the equation, except for basic quality control carried out through the RE's office, and makes the project contract as a whole easier to enforce in regard to deadlines and unavoidable delays.

In any case, I think the problems with consistency that you see in guide signing occur at the design level.  States vary radically in how aggressively they police consistency of design among their consultants and in-house design staff.  Meanwhile, contractors are required to fabricate the signs in accordance with the contract documents, otherwise they don't get paid, and therefore contractors won't query design decisions unless they are fairly certain that they won't be expected to pick up the tab for any change that is made to the contract documents.  Many contractors will keep their mouths shut rather than risk a reaction from the state DOT traffic designer along the lines of "I know what I am doing, and don't you dare question me."

The states whose signing is most consistent in new construction tend to have specialist traffic design units, typically based at the state DOT headquarters, which do nothing but design signs and supervise consultant sign designers.  MoDOT has such an unit (working out of the HQ Traffic office in Jefferson City) and as a result MoDOT signs as shown in recent construction plans are very consistent in appearance.

Programming of sign replacement is another factor in consistency of installed signage.  Some states do very large sign rehabilitation contracts, while others do very small sign replacements.  Kansas falls into the former category, while Oklahoma and Missouri fall into the latter.  So on I-70 in western Kansas, the guide signing looks very consistent because nearly all of it was installed as part of a single sign rehabilitation contract which had more than 150 sheets of sign designs (KDOT project number 106 K 5927-99, if memory serves), although KDOT no longer uses the same standards in respect of demountable copy and exit tabs without bottom border.  In Missouri, on the other hand, you see the work of the Jefferson City A-team in dribs and drabs because that is how MoDOT replaces signage--major sign replacements are fairly rare.  Oklahoma has a double whammy:  Oklahoma DOT likes small sign replacement contracts (I have been told this is to give smaller contractors a chance at bidding successfully for them), and many are deisgned by consultants, who (judging by the sign designs in the plans they produce) are rather laxly supervised by ODOT design personnel.  On the very rare occasions that Oklahoma DOT does a large sign replacement contract (I-40 east of Oklahoma City comes to mind), the resulting signs are very consistent in appearance.

Similarly, TxDOT handles sign design at the district level but Houston District has pretty consistent-looking signs because a large number of them--perhaps even the majority--were replaced in three large guide signing contracts between 2002 and 2006.  These three contracts had more than 200 sheets of sign designs alone and were all sealed (and possibly drawn) by one person.

[agentsteel53]

"Low speed" = "conventional road" in standard terminology.

I do have photos of very conventional roads with high-speed signage... there is the Auto Club publication from 1933 showing off the new black signs with white legend and glass reflectors.  The majority of these junctions were controlled with stop signs or traffic lights.

I have obsoleted sign specs for white-background conventional-road guide signs.  

did you send these along on that DVDR?  I never noticed them!  

They all went to green background with reflectorized foreground elements after 1958, but not all in one go (I think most of them changed around 1960).  

1960, coincidentally, is the date of the first non-porcelain side-of-the-road large guide signs with buttons, as far as I know.  It seems to have been an experiment that was formally adopted in 1963 - there are two survivors of this style, '60 stamps well visible on the back, at the north end of CA-79 at I-10.  

The green background became reflective too, but this was a later development in the 1960's, and was probably optional since there are many OCB signs which are manifestly newer than that.

What is OCB?  Is that the style with non-reflective green back and reflective white legend?  I think they used that for the conventional-road signs into the 1980s.  

one other thing to look out for - apparently in 1965 they experimented with retroreflective signage for high-speed side-of-the-road signs.  There was a survivor in Needles until recently, with US-66 shield patched over.  It is now gone; I do not know of any surviving examples of this experimental run.  

White background with retroreflective sheeting and black background with button reflectors (either embedded or demountable) were co-existing options for many of these sign codes, as was all-uppercase versus mixed-case.  

this is certainly news to me, especially the second bit - I had thought that for the high-speed side-of-road signs, all-uppercase had turned into mixed-case very abruptly in 1956, as I have not yet seen any examples that violate that threshold.  The overheads seem to have gone mixed-case before 1949, and the conventional-road ones might be formally all uppercase to this day.  I don't know much of signage practices more recently than 1980 or so.

interestingly, a lot of the modern retroreflective all-uppercase signs I see are absolute dead ringers for the 1930s-1950s layouts, except missing the Auto Club or Div Hwys logo, and being green and white.  This implies to me that the contractor made a carbon-copy replacement.  

In the late 1950's/early 1960's the option to "underline" (i.e., provide ruled lines between lines of legend for destinations in different directions) was added, probably in response to Slade Hurlbert's research into sign comprehension.

the earliest sign I have seen with this feature is a '56.  A white conventional-road sign.

The position may have changed since the early 2000's, but for decades--well into the 1990's--Caltrans kept all-uppercase conventional-road guide sign specs on the books.  All-uppercase is the norm for guide signing on conventional roads in other states, but in California it has been deprecated since at least the early 1970's.  It is my understanding that the all-uppercase conventional-road G-series specs were kept around for the benefit of counties and local agencies which wanted to use them on low-volume roads.  They were not considered suitable for state highways.

An interesting question is when OCB first started to be used.  Early 1960's, perhaps?

again, what is OCB?  

I have (accompanying Hurlbert's underlining article, which I think appeared in Proceedings of the Highway Research Board sometime in the early 1960's).  It was white-background, accompanied with a white "bear" shield, and had no underlining.  Unfortunately I don't have a digital camera copy of the article--WSU (where I found it) dumped its whole collection of PHRB before I could get to it.

that may be an earlier example in a later publication, as the bears were dropped in 1956.  

I think that is unlikely.  I think the background was opaque to begin with and the foreground elements were probably cut out of white retroreflective sheeting.  I have never known Caltrans to use screen processes for any of its guide signs.

makes sense - I had not taken a close look at those signs.  If they are pasted together, they are doing a good job of not peeling.

[J N Winkler]

OCB = opaque coated background.  There is a 1989 publication on the DVD I sent you which explains all of this.  The DVD also has the obsoleted sign specs for the white-background conventional-road guide signs.

As I understand it, there were basically two types of metallic oxide which were used on OCB signs to get the green color.  They both had very poor color conformity and one of the two tends to turn tan with age.  This is why there are so many green-background signs around California which look more tan than green.

In regards to new retroreflective signs looking very similar to the ones they replace, part of this has to do with how Caltrans signing engineers are trained.  They are encouraged to re-use sign structures in place, which typically means recycling panel dimensions.  These can be read off the as-builts when they are available, or if they are not available or are just wrong (it happens), there are ways to tell what kind of substrate the sign is and how big it is without actually measuring it or looking at it up close.  The tricks they use work mostly by looking for seams, counting rivets and panel joins, etc.

[TheStranger]

agentsteel53: Do you have any photos of the modern all-caps signs (that resemble the older black-on-whites in layout)?

[agentsteel53]

OCB = opaque coated background.  There is a 1989 publication on the DVD I sent you which explains all of this.  The DVD also has the obsoleted sign specs for the white-background conventional-road guide signs.

Found the files.  Yeah, it's a good question when the conventional-road guide signs got away from porcelain.  

As I mentioned elsewhere, they gradually got away from porcelain between 1957 (all signs porcelain beginning that year) to 1973 (no signs porcelain ending that year).  

In regards to new retroreflective signs looking very similar to the ones they replace, part of this has to do with how Caltrans signing engineers are trained.  They are encouraged to re-use sign structures in place, which typically means recycling panel dimensions.  These can be read off the as-builts when they are available, or if they are not available or are just wrong (it happens), there are ways to tell what kind of substrate the sign is and how big it is without actually measuring it or looking at it up close.  The tricks they use work mostly by looking for seams, counting rivets and panel joins, etc.

yep, I am aware of those tricks - rivets tend to be 10" apart on green signs, mounting holes an integer number of inches apart on smaller signs, etc.  And Caltrans is very notorious for making carbon-copy signs.  One example: I-5 northbound at CA-52 in La Jolla.  The original 52 extended both east (as a freeway) and west (La Jolla Pkwy) before it was truncated to I-5.  The old sign had a patch applied over the 52, but the WEST banner was not patched, yielding "WEST La Jolla Pkwy" as the sign legend.

The direct replacement sign - you guessed it, it's WEST La Jolla Blvd, with a space for a 52 shield!

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=san+diego+ca&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=21.736617,55.634766&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=San+Diego,+California&ll=32.832577,-117.232661&spn=0.00284,0.010879&z=17&layer=c&cbll=32.832777,-117.232679&panoid=GlCUzQ-09fYtToERv1jxug&cbp=12,354.56,,0,-0.5

(never mind the advance signs, which all imply that La Jolla Pkwy is 52, as opposed to the 52 being a freeway branching off in the complete opposite direction... I lived there for several years and got lost damn near every time.)

[agentsteel53]

agentsteel53: Do you have any photos of the modern all-caps signs (that resemble the older black-on-whites in layout)?

I thought I had a photo of this sign, but apparently I do not:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=julian+ca&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=21.736617,55.634766&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Julian,+San+Diego,+California&ll=33.078381,-116.602095&spn=0.002796,0.010879&z=17&layer=c&cbll=33.078434,-116.602167&panoid=0piL3Wfl9kUG4fEQCV4Bxg&cbp=12,331.71,,0,2.16

it is in Julian where 79 northbound turns from going northwest to going southwest.  You can barely see the sign due to poor lighting, but it is all caps, with three destination cities all to the left, and a left-pointing arrow.  It is all caps, and it looks exactly like an auto club sign in layout. 

[agentsteel53]

I also know of two retroreflective white guide signs in the LA area - one in Pasadena and one on old US-6 in South-Central... all that is missing is the logos, as the layout of the black text is identical.  Clearly they are carbon-copy replacements; though I believe they are put up by city authorities.

I will have to find the photos.  My southern California stuff is currently in a state of terrible disorganization. 

[J N Winkler]

For that matter, I think all-uppercase conventional-road guide signs may still be supported by the Caltrans sign specs, but just not diagrammed.  If you look at the G1 and G5 specs in the 2010 distribution (released last January), for example, there is a 30" tall smallest size for which Series C or Series D is specified.  These were all-uppercase alphabet series until very recently.

I am 95% sure that the last print-only specs distributions had low-numbered G-series specs which actually showed all-uppercase legend in the illustration.  However, I am thousands of miles away from my print specs, so I can't double-check.

As an aside, the low-numbered G-series specs seem to have been thinned out.  G2, G3, G4, G6, G18, and G19 are now gone.  G5 is still an archaeological marker though:  it says "Roseville 5, Sacramento 23, Oakland 110" just as it has done since the late 1950's.

[agentsteel53]

"Roseville 5, Sacramento 23, Oakland 110" just as it has done since the late 1950's.

is that even the correct distance along I-80?  Or is that the old US-40 distance?

[agentsteel53]

I was just looking at the 1958 planning manual, and it seems to specify black signs with white legend for conventional low-speed roads!  Now this is something I have never seen (except for that one 1956 photo that must've been an experiment, as I've seen a '57 that was white with black legend, separator bars and no logo).

it also says "reflectorized", which - looking at other context - seems to imply "reflective sheeting" as opposed to "discrete reflectors".  So maybe by '58 they had abandoned porcelain for the guide signs?  I have never seen a black sign with white reflective letters...

oddly, it also says 4" Series D but the diagram shows 4" Series C, non-reflectorized, which is the standard from before 1957 and after 1963, so I will assume they meant that.  See page 8-504.2

But all of that answers one question and substitutes another.

1) when did CA switch away from white signs for low-speed conventional roads?  1957 or '58, switching to photo-inverse black with white legend.

2) when did CA switch from black background to green background?

related question:

3) when did CA switch away from porcelain? looks like by 1958 - perhaps at the same time as they switched from white background to black background.

(Another specification found in the 1958 manual is the 2/3 ratio of lowercase to uppercase letters, for side-of-the-road high-speed signs, as opposed to AASHO's 3/4 interstate standard - I have seen black signs with the 3/4 ratio, with date stamp as early as 1958 and as late as 1961.  I've also seen side-of-the-road green with '58 stamp, so it must've been a gradual switch.)