Signage pet peeves

[Quillz]

The old Arkansas state route shields were quite nice:

[wytout]

My two biggest pet peeves are and will remain:

CT state route shields (and for that matter MA, RI, ME, ETC...)

My biggest though, even bigger than that, the disappearance of ligthed BGS's.  CT seems to be THE state that has done everything possible to ensure that every last lighted assembly has it's lights ripped down.  New england is generally not into lighted BGS's, but at least you can find a few needles in the haystack in most of the New England States...  But not in CT.  All the lights were stripped off the signs on the lower level of 84 near the 84/8 interchange in Waterbury in the last 10 years, and now there are only two NON WORKING assemblies left on highways in the entire state to the best of my knowledge... Exit 10 EB i 84 which will disappear once the new signing project finishes, and 1 at the onramp to 84 EB at exit 48.

I vaguely remember lighted signs here in CT when I was very very young.  Earrrrly 80's.  I wish I knew enough to pay attention to them then, and photograph them.  It's my favorite part of roadtrips down south.  I love the glow the lights illuminating the signs.  

I know they are disappearing all over the country really in favor of high grade reflective sheeings, but overhead BGS's w/out lights are so bleeding boring.  

Obviously this a cost saving/eco friendly measure to reduce energy consumption, but there is so much new energey efficient, (LED) lighting technology out there that we should be able to light all overhead BGS's for a fraction of the former costs.

Ok I'm rambling, I can't explain why it pains me so much, lol, but every night driving on 84 or 91 around the hartford area, I try and imagines those (crappy-late-model) button copy signs w/ a glow cast on them from something other than the reflection of my headlights.  Or driving around in west hartford in daylight, where the sign gantries are still original, and some of them still have conduit for wiring attached from the upright portion to the horizontal portion, appearing on close inspection as just the ghost of days gone by.

Speaking of i 84 in West Hartford, the signs SHOULD be lighted, they are circa 1986 CT button copy w/ retro reflective fields.  The bottons are so NON-REFLCTIVE now that all you can see at night is the green squares of retroreflective paneling dotted w/ a fuzzyness of dark spots that are actually button copy letters whose buttons just don't reflect for crap anymore. They are completely illegible.  This is dangerous for people who are not from the area and needs those signs at night.  I have a great idea... LIGHT THEM, then we can read them after sundown!

[Rupertus]

I've noticed some annoying inconsistencies regarding the way my home state of Michigan has been signing termini recently. It seems like we'd always had the shield above the "ENDS" plate, e.g. "M-1 ENDS". It's my understanding that most other states put the "END" plate above the shield, which is fine. But with all the signs that have been replaced in Michigan in the last 5 or 6 years, there have been a few I've seen where the "ENDS" plate has been installed above the shield for some reason. The most notorious example is the eastern terminus of US 10 at I-75, where there is an "ENDS US 10" assembly on both sides of the road! Then, I recently noticed that the shield assembly at the northern terminus of I-275 inexplicably reads "I-275 END". I coudn't speculate on who (MDOT, contractors, county road commissions, et al.) is responsible for putting these goofs up, but I have to wonder if they are looking them over afterward to make sure they make sense...

[Quillz]

Today when driving on US-395 to Mammoth Mtn, I came across a CA-168 shield using Series F numerals. It looked particularly ugly on the wide shield.

[1995hoo]

It's been briefly mentioned in a different context on page 6 or so of this thread, I suppose, but in a different context.

Back in the mid-1990s I lived in North Carolina while attending law school and I noted how the white signs warning of a reduction in the speed limit always said "REDUCE SPEED AHEAD." Every other state in which I've ever driven has used "REDUCED SPEED AHEAD." I believe the latter is the version called for by the MUTCD. The grammarian in me far prefers North Carolina's version because the driver in me notes that the MUTCD's version is incorrect as a practical matter in most cases: It is the SPEED LIMIT that is reduced ahead, not the "SPEED," since most of the time everybody continues to drive at the same speed they were already going, especially when the speed limit change is arbitrary or unnecessary (a local example that comes to mind is where eastbound I-66 drops from 65 mph to 60 mph near Manassas). "REDUCE SPEED AHEAD" more accurately communicates the situation–the driver is supposed to reduce his speed ahead.

Thus, the verbiage "REDUCED SPEED AHEAD" has long been a pet peeve of mine because I believe the use of "REDUCED" would only be correct if the sign said "REDUCED SPEED LIMIT AHEAD."

With that said, I prefer the new yellow warning-sign version based on the Canadian style because it tells you what the reduced speed limit will be. I know there are apparently some places that used a "REDUCE[D] SPEED AHEAD" sign that included the number, but I've never encountered those that I can recall.


On page 10 of this thread, PennDOTFan mentioned Virginia's implementation of Clearview and included a picture of some signs seen on I-395. I don't think all of Virginia's Clearview signs are as bad as the I-395 ones are. The newer ones at the Beltway's interchange with Telegraph Road are a lot better, for example. I think the problem on I-395 is that they replaced a bunch of perfectly good signs for the sole purpose of putting up Clearview signs, but they made the new signs exactly the same as the old ones in all other ways (except perhaps for a lighter shade of green). The northbound sign for Exit 3A, for example (Duke Street towards Landmark), still has the exit tab on the left for a right-hand exit. Because they failed to rethink any of the signage, the text is simply too big. (The new signs also introduce some other oddities. The first advance sign for Exit 3 on the northbound carriageway refers to "Little River Trpk" as opposed to the usual "Tnpk.")

My pet peeve with signage associated with I-95 and I-395 in Virginia is the half-assed manner in which VDOT signs the reversible HOV carriageway. The signs seem to be a mish-mash of things they've thrown together over the years with little rhyme or reason to what they actually post. I know signage for "managed lanes," as the MUTCD calls them, is allowed to assume some level of knowledge on the driver's part because there are "non-managed lanes" (what the DC-area traffic reporters often call the "main line" as to Shirley Highway) that can be used without restriction. But VDOT's signs are bizarre. For example, the signs on the Fairfax County Parkway list "TO RESTRICTED LANES" as a destination without ever mentioning what the "Restricted Lanes" are–no I-95 shield, no I-395 shield, just "TO RESTRICTED LANES." If I hadn't lived here since 1974 I'd give a big "WTF???" when I saw that. None of the other signs directing drivers to those lanes ever contain a shield either (for example, there's an overhead sign on the Franconia-Springfield Parkway giving distances to exits that simply lists "Restricted Lanes" with a distance.) The other thing that I've always thought is stupid is that there is no sign advising what the exits from the express lanes are until you're already in the express lanes. Going north, for example, once you're in there you see a sign saying "Exits from Restricted Lanes" that lists the mileage to Springfield, the Pentagon, and DC. That sign ought to be posted BEFORE the entry to those lanes. I suppose giving less information discourages non-local drivers from going in there, so I ought to like the lack of helpful signs as a local resident, but the roadgeek in me takes offense.

I remember back in the old days (1970s/1980s) the signs over the express lanes used white text on a black background to distinguish them from the signs over the local lanes. The FHWA made them change it and now they have standard white-on-green signs but with tabs on top saying "EXPRESS LANES ONLY." I rather prefer the old system. Toronto does something similar on Ontario 401 whereby the collector lanes use white-on-blue signs reminiscent of European motorway signage while the express lanes use white-on-green. To me that makes more sense than the "EXPRESS LANES ONLY" tab because of the possibility of the tab disappearing.......although I also think that if a driver cannot tell that a sign over a separate carriageway applies only to the other carriageway, he's not competent enough to have a driver's license.


Edited to add: Here are some pictures I took of the signs I mention above on the Franconia-Springfield Parkway. The first sign is taken from Hooes Road, the old road that runs parallel to, and was largely superseded by, the Parkway. The remaining signs are the ones you see as you proceed east to the interchange with the I-95 HOV facility. Note that nowhere do any of these signs tell you that the "Restricted Lanes," as VDOT calls them, are on I-95.









In contrast, when you leave the nearby Franconia-Springfield Metrorail station you see the sign gantry shown below. These signs are not without their own sins–"Parkway" should say "Franconia-Springfield Parkway" and the periods in "H.O.V." are hideous and remind me of the silly New York Times style that mandates stuff like "N.F.L." and "N.H.L." (In general, I hate unnecessary periods in abbreviations, no doubt due in large part to the overuse of stupid periods in legal citation.) But the idea of "TO I-95 HOV" makes a lot more sense than VDOT's versions shown above, especially the first of the signs shown above, simply because it tells you what road the HOV is!!!

[Alps]

@1995hoo: I've see "REDUCED SPEED 25 AHEAD", "REDUCED SPEED 25 MPH", "REDUCED SPEED 25 MILES", or "REDUCED SPEED 25" all used as advance warnings. The latter is frustrating because it's only three lines, so it looks exactly like a speed limit even if the actual drop is hundreds of feet ahead.

[1995hoo]

@1995hoo: I've see "REDUCED SPEED 25 AHEAD", "REDUCED SPEED 25 MPH", "REDUCED SPEED 25 MILES", or "REDUCED SPEED 25" all used as advance warnings. The latter is frustrating because it's only three lines, so it looks exactly like a speed limit even if the actual drop is hundreds of feet ahead.

Whereas "REDUCED SPEED 25 MILES" sounds as though it's warning you of something 25 miles ahead, which would be kind of pointless. I may have seen some signs of these sort at some point, but off the top of my head I simply don't ever recall seeing any. But they all suffer from the same problem I cited in my prior post–the "speed" itself isn't reduced. Only the "speed limit" is reduced. Yeah, I'm extremely picky about grammar. My mother was an English teacher.

[1995hoo]

I wanted to mention this yesterday but didn't have a suitable picture of the second sign shown below. (I don't have "pet" peeves. I have a whole zoo of peeves.)

Fairfax County used to put up tiny little green street signs on most corners. They were hard to see and often you didn't see them until you passed the street you wanted. Part of the reason is supposedly that VDOT favors span wire for traffic lights yet maintains (wrongly) that it's unsafe to hang street signs from the span wire (never mind that plenty of other places do it with no problem). In recent years Fairfax County opted for larger white-on-blue street signs.....but they still put them in some really stupid places. See photo below. How is anyone turning right (see the white pickup and the white Acura) supposed to see this street sign? They're the people for whom the sign is there in the first place! This shows a lack of thought by the people who put up the sign: The light pole was once closer to the intersection since there was no right-turn lane there (it was added when the houses visible in the background were built) and so the sign wasn't hidden behind a tree then. Evidently they simply moved the thing and didn't bother to think about it.




Now, in fairness I should acknowledge that there is an advance green sign up the street from that (see below), which is especially important when the sign at the intersection is hidden behind a tree. But what I don't understand is why they don't want to put the sign up on the mast arm out over the road where it belongs. Yes, the street changes names, but that's easy enough to solve—you just put up a sign with both names using arrows. (I just noticed that you can see the pole for that mast arm poking up behind the tree in the distance to the right of the Land Rover.)




I suppose it's fair to acknowledge that putting the street sign behind a tree is particularly stupid and not routine, but the general theme of using these sorts of small signs when you're moving to mast-arm traffic lights is the bigger peeve of mine in this context.

[froggie]

Part of the reason is supposedly that VDOT favors span wire for traffic lights

Not the case anymore.  VDOT standard is mast arm.  Older signals may be span wire (and most of the secondary route installations around me are), but the newer standard, and the standard period on virtually all primary routes, is mast arm.

Meanwhile, at least in my corner of Fairfax County, most of the mast arm installations include the cross-street name on the mast arm.

[1995hoo]

Part of the reason is supposedly that VDOT favors span wire for traffic lights

Not the case anymore.  VDOT standard is mast arm.  Older signals may be span wire (and most of the secondary route installations around me are), but the newer standard, and the standard period on virtually all primary routes, is mast arm.

Meanwhile, at least in my corner of Fairfax County, most of the mast arm installations include the cross-street name on the mast arm.

Well, I could change it to "favored," but historically that was a major reason for refusing to put the street signs up overhead in a visible place–they contended that the span wire wouldn't support them. I remember when I first saw wire-mounted street signs (probably in the Raleigh area) I rolled my eyes at the notion that Virginia didn't do this.

It's weird, it seems to me that it's hit or miss whether they install an arm-mounted sign. The next two intersections south from the one shown above have them, although the fonts are inconsistent (one set is caps/lowercase, one is all caps), whereas the next intersection north (the big one at Van Dorn and Franconia) doesn't have them, and at an intersection of that size you'd think it would make sense.

I think more than anything it's the utter inconsistency that I find irritating.

But with all that said, putting a street sign behind a row of trees as shown above is stupid.

[Presty1965]

Here are two on Wisconsin's U.S. 41 -- I mean, Interstate 41/55/57/__.

The first is the "Stadium" exit in Green Bay. That is, of course, for Lambeau Field, which hasn't been called a "Stadium" since the name was changed from City Stadium in 1965.

I was reminded of the second tonight when I drove through the Fox Cities. There is an exit sign that reads (paraphrasing)
_____
VA Outpatient Center
Exit 139

Fox Cities Stadium
Exit 138
--------

The problem? I was going northbound, so the sign listing is in the wrong order.

And there's also an exit sign with a green border underneath the white border that is the width of the white border. Misplaced border.

[Presty1965]

Farther south: I hate cities/metro areas that have names for freeways and interchanges and then fail to put a sign indicating the name of the interchange. This is a problem when you're going into an unfamiliar area and listen to radio traffic reports and you don't know what they're talking about.

In Milwaukee, for instance, I-94 from Waukesha County into downtown is the East-West Freeway, and I-43/94 from north of Milwaukee through downtown is the North-South Freeway. No signs indicate either. Ditto for the Stadium Freeway (U.S. 41 north and south of I-94), such as it is, or the Zoo Freeway (the west part of 894 -- I-894 from I-94 to I-43 -- plus U.S. 45 north of I-894), or the Airport Freeway (the south part of 894 -- I-894/43 from I-43 to I-94), or the Rock Freeway (I-43 west of I-894), or the Fond du Lac Freeway (which is not U.S. 45 toward Fond du Lac, but Wisconsin 145 east of U.S. 45)

What's worse is the interchange names:
Marquette: I-94/I-43
Mitchell: I-94/43/I-894
Zoo: I-94/I-894/U.S. 45
Stadium: I-94/U.S. 41
Airport: I-94/Wisconsin 119 (so the Airport Interchange is south of the Airport Freeway)
Hale: I-894/I-43 (connecting the Zoo, Rock and Airport freeways)
Lake: I-794 (keep going east and you will get wet)
North: U.S. 45/Wisconsin 145
Richfield: U.S. 41/U.S. 45

The only reason I know any of this is because of www.wisconsinhighways.org/milwaukee/system_map.html. I once made a 911 call while driving in Milwaukee and told the dispatcher where the crash was, and she said "Oh, the Marquette Interchange?" Well, how was I (a non-Milwaukeean) supposed to know that?

[Michael]

Part of the reason is supposedly that VDOT favors span wire for traffic lights yet maintains (wrongly) that it's unsafe to hang street signs from the span wire (never mind that plenty of other places do it with no problem).

NYSDOT seems to do just fine.  On the other extreme, in the early 2000s, Onondaga County installed signs above the center turn lane on Route 57 using long mast arms for what I'd guess to be a 24" x 24" sign.

[deathtopumpkins]

On the other extreme, in the early 2000s, Onondaga County installed signs above the center turn lane on Route 57 using long mast arms for what I'd guess to be a 24" x 24" sign.

Pennsylvania seems to do that too. When I was up in State College last month both US Routes and many of the local roads had overhead signs indicating the SLTL.

[InterstateNG]

I've noticed some annoying inconsistencies regarding the way my home state of Michigan has been signing termini recently. It seems like we'd always had the shield above the "ENDS" plate, e.g. "M-1 ENDS". It's my understanding that most other states put the "END" plate above the shield, which is fine. But with all the signs that have been replaced in Michigan in the last 5 or 6 years, there have been a few I've seen where the "ENDS" plate has been installed above the shield for some reason. The most notorious example is the eastern terminus of US 10 at I-75, where there is an "ENDS US 10" assembly on both sides of the road! Then, I recently noticed that the shield assembly at the northern terminus of I-275 inexplicably reads "I-275 END". I coudn't speculate on who (MDOT, contractors, county road commissions, et al.) is responsible for putting these goofs up, but I have to wonder if they are looking them over afterward to make sure they make sense...

In traveling throughout the state, signage differences are usually due to district preferences.  For example, University prefers to use the smaller cities as controls on I-94 (Marshall, Jackson, Ann Arbor) and North is much more prolific with Clearview than other regions.

[agentsteel53]

district preferences

yep, much signage inconsistency can be explained away by that.  for example, in New Mexico, some districts were using embossed route shields with printed numbers as early as 1935 (embossed "NEW MEXICO" and "US", printed number).  I have seen a US-180 shield like that, and US-180 did not exist in the state between 1935 and 1961 due to there being two different incarnations of the route ...

meanwhile, other districts used fully embossed shields with the round font set as late as 1959, as evidenced by the "NEW MEXICO/US/84" shield I got that is stamped "59" on the back.

just makes it a lot tougher to figure out what the standards were for a given state at a given time!

[rawmustard]

In traveling throughout the state, signage differences are usually due to district preferences.  For example, University prefers to use the smaller cities as controls on I-94 (Marshall, Jackson, Ann Arbor) and North is much more prolific with Clearview than other regions.

There probably have been a lot more sign replacements since 2005 (when MDOT adopted Clearview) in the counties in both the North and Superior regions. Once counties in the regions in the lower parts of the state undergo their next round of sign replacements, they too will have Clearview on guide signage.

[JCinSummerfield]

My biggest pet peeve - and I pass it every day - is US-23's exit 1 in Michigan. Sterns Rd. My problem? IT SHOULD BE EXIT 2! Clearly between mile markers 1 & 2.

[Duke87]

My biggest pet peeve - and I pass it every day - is US-23's exit 1 in Michigan. Sterns Rd. My problem? IT SHOULD BE EXIT 2! Clearly between mile markers 1 & 2.

Google puts the distance from the state line as 1.5 miles.
So, you might think round up, but if they use two decimal places when measuring and if it's actually at mile 1.49, then exit 1 is what it should be.
They may also have simply measured to the northbound offramp.

[Alps]

Exit 1 comes after mile 1 and before mile 2, always, everywhere. It's a question of what "before mile 2 " means. Some states measure by the first ramp, meaning the overpass could be at mile 2.25. Some states measure by the overpass. A couple of states do their own things that I don't recall offhand. Some states allow Exit 0 for exits before mile 1.

[myosh_tino]

Exit 1 comes after mile 1 and before mile 2, always, everywhere.

Not so.  In California, exit 1's "zone" is the first 1.49 miles (0 to 1.49), exit 2's zone is from mile 1.5 to 2.49 and so on.  Also, exit numbers are determined by where the intersecting road crosses the freeway.

[JCinSummerfield]

I don't buy that either.  Exit 1 in Michigan should be in the first mile, exit 2 should be in the second mile.  While that may not be the case, that's the way it should be.

[NE2]

If only the first mile is exit 1, then you might have exit 2 right after milepost 1 (or even before if the state uses the overpass location). Since the exit numbers are supposed to match the mileposts, this is to be avoided.

[Kacie Jane]

When I'm driving, my assumption is generally 0.00-1.99 = 1, 2.00-2.99 = 2, etc., in otherwords, round down.  A quick glance at I-5's mileposts/exit numbers shows Washington uses this system.

Although California's pure rounding is certainly a reasonable alternative.

[ftballfan]

Michigan uses pure rounding, but MM 159 on US-31 is within Exit 158.