Comments on: Chaos comes to National Cycle Network signs

By: John

John — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 09:54:42 +0000

Political correctness is really out of control in the UK surely the way forward is metric or how about a radical move leave things as they are. We must be the only country in the world where you purchase wood with a mixture of metric and imperial measurements.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:36:30 +0000

Noticed on my way to work two new signs, ostensibly for pedestrians but overhang onto the road enough for cars to see it. One points to ‘Subway 800m’, and on the way back ‘Safe Crossing Point 400m’. This is on the sign welcoming you to [place name deleted]. Have to point out that almost all the cycle paths in the region are signposted in km as well. Is this just a forward thinking council or a sign of greater change across the country?

By: philh

philh — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:29:23 +0000

One of the reasons why DfT won’t allow metres for distance is because they already use ‘m’ for mile.
This is quite inexcusable given that the adoption of the Vienna convention many years ago afforded a perfect opportunity to establish the correct international symbol for metre on UK road signs.
There would be no harm using ‘m’ on cycle and pedstrian signs. Common-sense would make it obvious that a distance signed as say 800 m would not mean 800 miles.

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:12:22 +0000

Anything to avoid having to use the metric system. No wonder the UK is in decline.

By: Tony

Tony — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:32:24 +0000

It is utterly bizarre, not to mention highly unsightly, to put times on such signposts. With OS maps in kilometres, that should be the default. How on earth does the person designing the sign know how fast I’ll be cycling? How do vastly different types of cyclists know how long it will take them? At least if I know it’s 5 km I can judge how long it takes me to cover that distance, but I can have no idea when it comes to someone else’s view that it’s a 30 min ride.

By: Robin Paice

Robin Paice — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:10:06 +0000

A further criticism of the DfT’s proposed new sign is that they use improvised abbreviations instead of internationally recognised symbols to denote “hours” and “minutes”. The former are language-dependent and in Wales they would have to be translated (making the signs bigger and even more cluttered). The correct international symbol for “hour” is lower-case “h” (which is understood in e.g. Germany even though the equivalent German word is “Stunde”). The correct symbol for “minute” is lower-case “min”, which should NOT be pluralised. The DfT probably would not condone spelling or grammatical or punctuation mistakes – so why can’t they get the symbols for measurement units right?

By: Martin Vlietstra

Martin Vlietstra — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:07:18 +0000

The use of time to denote a distance on static road signs is fundamentally wrong – the authority erecting the signs concerend is making a value judgement – they should be concerend with displaying verifyable information only.

I agree that there is a case on overhead variable roads signs on motorways – after all the speed of the traffic AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME is measureable.