It has had to postpone three road projects as part of its contribution to the new government’s £6.2 billion of initial spending cuts. One of these projects is Phase 3 of the Managed Motorways Birmingham box. Managed Motorway projects are an alternative to widening, involving the erection of variable speed limit signs on new gantries over the motorway together with the use of the hard shoulder for traffic at peak times. The postponed project related to the M6 between junctions 5 and 8, and would have been worth up to £200 million.

There was no guarantee that these new signs, expensive even by DfT standards, would be switchable from imperial to metric, and on past DfT performance one suspects that this was not even considered. Perhaps when and if this scheme is resuscitated, wider counsels will prevail, the scheme will be designed to cope with the inevitable metric change over, and a potential waste of many millions of pounds will be averted.

It seems that when it comes to metricating road signs British politicians have a blind spot, as though they don’t count.

If anything sets Britain apart from the rest of the world it would seem that we are prepared to change practically everything else, including what is taught in school, but not the road signs.

Strange that Canada, Australia, Ireland etc seemed to have no hesitation in thinking that they were a necessary part of the change. Even the US when they put their minds to it started to do it.

I’m mostly proud to be British but not when it comes to this.

By the way the Australian replacement of all road signs (on Sunday 1974 July 1) was initially much less that the 100 pounds per sign you quote from the Irish transition. We used stick-on labels to cover the old signs and then the signs were replaced in the normal maintenance cycle. With hindsight I estimate that the stick-on labels plus labor might have cost around $10 each.

In Canada the road signs were changed from imperial to metric on the Labour day weekend in 1977. The change went smoothly and the kilometre became part of Canadian speech quite quickly.

Pat Naughtin
Geelong, Australia

The Julian calendar was in general use in Europe and Northern Africa from the time of the Roman Empire until the end of the sixteenth century. Then, between 1582 and 1700, most of Britain’s continental neighbours adopted the Gregorian calendar, with dates 10 or 11 days ahead of ours. Travellers to Ireland and to England’s colonies in North America did not have to worry, as these retained the Julian calendar. However, travellers to the continent lost 10 or 11 days on the way out, and recovered them on return.

Eventually, the British Government, having struggled and failed to overcome the problems resulting from this situation, decided that change was unavoidable. In 1752, the Gregorian calendar was adopted throughout the British Empire and in Ireland. Wednesday 2 September 1752 was followed immediately by Thursday 14 September. Popular hostility was expected but failed to materialise.

So it is with UK Governments today, ducking and weaving to avoid the consequences of the mismatch between the units used for distance/speed measurement on UK roads and on those of our neighbours. One day, they will bow to the inevitable. The question is: how much resources will be wasted in the mean time? Look out for more articles in Metric Views.

Perhaps the message to the public is this: the Department keeps on making mistakes because of the two systems. It is high time to ditch the imperial relics and go metric!

Any possibility that similar legal action would stand a chance in the UK? I would certainly hope so, given how the DfT has mismanaged things and betrayed their fiduciary trust with respect to the taxpayers of the UK.