The Worst of Road Signs

[rickmastfan67]

This was installed recently on I-376 (former PA-60)......

Why are these 2 separate signs? Couldn't PennDOT have combined the 2?

I'm guessing that they didn't want to deal with the overhead light assembly.

Original signage

[Central Avenue]

This was installed recently on I-376 (former PA-60)......

I can't stop staring at that arrow on the far right. It's beautifully ugly.

[Mr_Northside]

I'm guessing that they didn't want to deal with the overhead light assembly.
Original signage

They did something with the overhead lights... Comparing to the older Streetview, a light was added to each sign, and they look like they might be different lights altogether.

But, damn, those signs really look like shit.  I haven't been out that way west of I-79 in about a year and a half now, so I haven't seen them until now... At least they did a good job (in my opinion) a couple years ago with the signage for the I-79 "Missing Ramps" project.  But those Robinson ones are truly horrible.

[Quillz]

Or should this go in "Best of Road Signs?"

[roadfro]

Is that a poor execution of the arrow-per-lane sign in the newest MUTCD, or is it an independent PennDOT invention?

It's probably a PennDOT invention. Since this doesn't appear to be a "major" interchange, the MUTCD wouldn't necessarily prescribe an arrow-per-lane sign at all...

Sure is fugly though!

[SidS1045]

For some reason MassDOT seems to be doing a lot of these lately...humungous reassurance markers on one- or two-digit numbered routes.  Massachusetts has historically taken a lot of heat, especially from tourists, for not marking their roads well, so maybe they're now overcompensating.

[okroads]

[hbelkins]

Some examples from Kentucky...



The shotgun pellet holes are the best looking thing about this one!



This one has some alignment issues, and one of the ugliest "9's" this side of I-79 and I-279 in Pittsburgh.



Ugh, double ugh.



Along the same lines as the US 27/68 example.



Someone must have been drunk in the sign shop...

[Central Avenue]

Or should this go in "Best of Road Signs?"

I actually kinda like that one, if it were mounted properly.

[vtk]

That's absolutely horrid!

[Scott5114]

I think "absolutely horrid" is written into the Oklahoma standards docs somewhere.

[Rick1962]

The ODOT Standards don't seem to have specs for overhead sign layout. While Texas specifies which Clearview fonts to use for what signs, and provide layout standards, ODOT leaves it up to the individual engineering companies and sign contractors.

Ironically, during the Age of Button Copy, Oklahoma's signage was generally very good (Turnpike Authority notwithstanding).

Those Lawton signs are works of art compared to some of the abominations that have appeared around Tulsa. I'd photograph them, but I'm afraid they'd break my camera!

[Scott5114]

Agreed. Oklahoma's button copy was pretty consistent. There was a cohesive house style that could be perceived, and everything was more or less peachy. Somewhere in there during the transition all hell broke loose. Kind of confusing because Kansas is transitioning from demountable copy to direct-applied, and the signs look more or less the same...

And yeah, Tulsa seems to have it worse than OKC when it comes to ugly ass signage. Wonder if it's just that division of ODOT falling short, or the contractors that tend to work in the Tulsa area?

[Kniwt]

The young-adult drama "Beaver Falls" premiered on UK digital channel E4 tonight. Where is Beaver Falls, California? Perhaps this sign from the first minute of the show might help. Then again, it might not.



Also, although not strictly a sign, apparently California has reverted to white center (centre?) lines:

[CL]

Trebuchet MS? Yech.

[myosh_tino]

Hmmm... Helvetica for "121"... double yuck!

Other observations...
* CA-121 is located north of San Francisco, over 400 miles away from Los Angeles!
* Los Angeles and Sacramento are NOT 49 miles apart

Needless to say, this is a purely fictional sign someone at the studio put together just for the show.

Here's how Caltrans might sign this junction...

[Quillz]

I think that's the first time I've ever seen a Trebuchet MS road sign.

[ftballfan]

What is worse, Clearview or Helvetica?

[SteveG1988]

I vote Helvetica.

[Rick1962]

...Tulsa seems to have it worse than OKC when it comes to ugly ass signage. Wonder if it's just that division of ODOT falling short, or the contractors that tend to work in the Tulsa area?

Some of both, I believe. Either ODOT's Tulsa office is happy to sign off on poorly-designed sign layouts, or they won't hold contractors accountable for poor product. It also seems that there are only a few contractors that are awarded the projects around here, so ODOT may just have to settle for what they can get.

[agentsteel53]

Helvetica is significantly worse.  Blecch.

[english si]

The young-adult drama "Beaver Falls" premiered on UK digital channel E4 tonight. Where is Beaver Falls, California? Perhaps this sign from the first minute of the show might help. Then again, it might not.

I've had the misfortune to see trailers for that. I think Beaver Falls is not very subtle description of the what the main (British) characters want out of being camp counsellors.

I'm highly surprised that someone would watch the show and get a screenshot of a sign!

It was filmed in South Africa, hence the white centrelines.

[J N Winkler]

...Tulsa seems to have it worse than OKC when it comes to ugly ass signage. Wonder if it's just that division of ODOT falling short, or the contractors that tend to work in the Tulsa area?

Some of both, I believe. Either ODOT's Tulsa office is happy to sign off on poorly-designed sign layouts, or they won't hold contractors accountable for poor product. It also seems that there are only a few contractors that are awarded the projects around here, so ODOT may just have to settle for what they can get.

I am fairly sure the US 281 Lawton/Cache Road signs match the construction plan sheets.  I am not aware of any "ugly" signs in either the Oklahoma City or Tulsa areas which do not match the construction plan sheets, with the exception of an I-35 job (mentioned here some months ago) where we compared pictures of the actual signs to the plan sheets and discovered that the signs had been "cleaned up" compared to the plan sheets.  This was job piece no. 09034(05), which was designed by Cobb Engineering.

Basically, I would not blame the contractors.  In general I think they do the best they can with the plans they are given, and when the designs are fixed (I do not know whether by Oklahoma DOT or on the contractors' initiative), the result is usually an improvement over what is shown in the plans.  (Remember that contractors are not obliged to clean up design mistakes and indeed are not allowed to do so if it would mean building the project otherwise than as shown in the plans.)

In my experience Oklahoma DOT replaces signs either through pure signing contracts or turnkey contracts.  I think the pure signing contracts go through headquarters design staff in Oklahoma City (i.e., are either designed by them or by consultants they choose), while the turnkey contracts tend to be managed by the divisions.  This is probably because Oklahoma DOT, like most Midwestern state DOTs these days, tends to do the small projects (such as pure sign replacements) in-house while giving the really large projects to consultants, though it is just conjecture on my part that the large turnkeys are managed by the divisions rather than by HQ design staff.

There are basically three consultants which do a lot of traffic engineering work for Oklahoma DOT.  Of the three, Cobb generates probably the flakiest designs:  mismatched capital letter heights, wrong types of arrows (including the Roadgeek "down" arrow instead of the real down arrow), etc.  Traffic Engineering Consultants (TEC) is somewhat better, but they use inline fractions.  Benham usually produces very clean designs.  For the absolute cleanest designs, however, you have to go to the Traffic Engineering design squads, which I think operate out of HQ.  The "crack shot" among the Traffic Engineering designers is Faria Emamian, (past?) president of the Oklahoma Traffic Engineering Association, who is based in Edmond.

Because of the division of labor, with large contracts going to consultants and small contracts being kept in-house, you will generally see the cleanest sign designs in pure sign replacements because those are the most likely to be designed in-house by the Traffic Engineering people.  They have standardized on GuidSIGN but I don't know whether they force that choice on consultants.

In Kansas things work a little differently.  Kansas DOT has a very consistent house style not just because it has a very prescriptive Highway Sign Manual, but also because all design activities are handled through KDOT HQ design staff in Topeka, including the small jobs which are done by KDOT staff and the large jobs which are done by consultants (KDOT's go-to consultants include HNTB, Burns & McDonnell, George Butler & Associates, Professional Engineering Consultants, and Wilson & Co.).  KDOT pure sign replacements always have the title "Signing & Delineation," the same style of title sheet, and are always done in-house by KDOT's Bureau of Traffic Engineering.  Consultants do the sign design for large turnkey contracts but they are required to send traffic engineering plan sheets to KDOT HQ design staff for review, and KDOT Traffic Engineering checks them very thoroughly for conformity to KDOT house style.  There is more of a propensity for consultant-designed work to diverge from accepted norms than in-house work, but this is far less pronounced than for Oklahoma DOT because the review process is so rigid.

KDOT in-house design work always uses SignCAD, but consultants are allowed to use the design software of their choice, unlike the case in (say) Arizona DOT, where consultants are required to use the same program (SignCAD) in the same version as Arizona DOT.

In Missouri, MoDOT districts are not allowed to do their own sign designs--they have to forward all sign design requests to a traffic design unit in Jefferson City (I call them the Jefferson City A-Team; their real name is probably much less colorful).  As in Kansas and Oklahoma, small stuff gets done in-house while large stuff gets parcelled out to consultants.  Consultants produce their own sign designs for large projects, but I think they are also required to use SignCAD exclusively (certainly I have never seen anything else used in recent years), and I think the review process for consultant work is, if anything, even more rigid than in Kansas.

[Rick1962]

You made some very good points there.

It would appear the blame for bad signage originates with ODOT and their lack of a comprehensive signing manual.

[okroads]

A couple of Tulsa-area signs: