I was walking north up Wells Street the other day, looking for Erie, when I was reminded of a pet peeve of mine. The signs on one way streets downtown often only have print on the side facing traffic. Thus pedestrians, such as myself, going the opposite way of the car traffic, are left to our memory, or GPS, to figure what street we are approaching or, must pass the sign and look back. Which does not seem a system that behooves a great city.
I thought of complaining, but what would be the point? Who would listen? Nobody. What would happen? Nothing.
That is not the way of Steve Bahnsen. Readers with long memories might recall the column in 2015 that I wrote about Bahnsen, a self-appointed monitor of highway signs or, should I say, the abysmal state of highway signs. Since that ran, I have received a steady stream of countless updates. I thought I would share one. Whether you view him as a tireless advocate or a fixated crank, he reflects that very American notion that gaps should be filled and wrongs should be corrected,
I am thrilled and delighted to be able to share the attached photos of the new Exit Number plaques and gores just installed along US Highways 61/151 in Dubuque. This culminates a 20 year project to have these done.
The photos are in an order coming from the south with the first exit being 183. The exits continue north with the last one being 190.
(Not all of these have exits or entrances in both directions thus the gap in numbering them.)
Gores are at the exit with a green arrow. New gore signs were installed featuring the next exit number also.
One photo shows the Mile Post 189 sign. Miles begin at the southern or western border of a state. US 61 enters Iowa from Missouri south of Keokuk. Mile Post 1 is a mile north of the border. Dubuque is thus 189 miles from the Missouri border.
After crossing the Mississippi River, US 61/151 continues in Wisconsin where the numbering system begins all over with Exit 1 where the highways go to Hazel Green, Wis and East Dubuque, Illinois.
Numbering these exits will be helpful for those who need GPS to find where they are going.
Exit numbers are shown on the new 2023 Iowa highway map.
These signs are near the US 20 bridge that was shown last year on the Mighty Mississippi River stamps.
I hope you have enjoyed this information about I O W A.
Steve
Which leaves a question: what is a gore? I put it to Steve. A few days passed, and then I received this:
signs and postal problems. So I just got to your message.
To define a "gore" on an expressway or Interstate:
It is the area where the exit is. And is between where the mainline continues straight
and the exit ramp begins. People get into the right lane to exit through the gore to get
to the exit ramp.
The green sign here with an arrow is called the Gore Exit sign.
If the expressway has exit numbers, that number is now shown on the Gore Exit sign.
as another reminder for travelers of where they are going.
Those Dubuque exits were not numbered at all before so that is why everything is new.
Also, less that one tenth of one percent of the exits nationwide are to the Left. So the
arrow on these signs point to the left. An example is when you are going to O'Hare on
I 190, there is a Left Exit to go south on the Tri State, I 294.
However that Gore Exit sign has been down for months!!!
Many street signs in Chicago are unreadable from a bus, as they've put them on on the crossbars of the traffic light structures.
ReplyDeleteI was on Lower Wacker Friday & the street signs down there are atrocious! They should be signs mounted on light boxes so they are back lit, but they're just plain small green & white signs that don't even have a light shining on them. And I don't think I even saw signs for Garland or Garvey Courts.
I have chuckled at assorted street sign blunders in our area for a long time. For many years, eastbound traffic on Illinois 120 approaching the I-94 interchange would see a sign announcing the entrance to "Toll Way." (They finally reworded it a little more officially.) Once you're actually on the southbound tollway approaching the Lake Forest oasis, the sign announcing that has a separate caption across the bottom to helpfully add that the next oasis is 20-something miles further on... except it isn't. The O'Hare Oasis has been gone for years, along with two others.
ReplyDeleteI think Steve's self-appointed mission is a fine one that benefits others, but where he could stand some improvement himself is in clear writing. I have to admit that I reread portions of his letter several times and was still unclear on what his point was or where he was going with it. "New gore signs were installed featuring the next exit number also." Okay... does that mean that Exit 1 is now labeled as Exit 1 (which is good), or does it show that the next exit is 2, which might add a little confusion at that instant? (Perhaps posting one of his photos would shed more light.) It's great that exit numbers are shown on the new Iowa 2023 map, but... a map? What percentage of motorists out there are not aware of the GPS on their phones or in their dashboards?
I don't want to discourage Steve on his mission at all, really, but sometimes you need to rein it in a little and focus on how you're delivering your message. If you're submitting fifty reports at once and hope to be taken seriously, perhaps a table of entries or a checklist would convey things more clearly, to give the recipients some kind of structured plan to work with. I wish him well.
Now there's a man after my own heart. Steve is doing the Lord's work for sure. My particular peeve is the lack of visible cross street signs. How is it that when you are looking for a certain side street it turns out that it is the only one not marked? Another is the sorry state of all the signage in Lower Wacker. It shouldn't take more than half a day with a truck-mounted power washer and a couple of workers to blast them all back to visibility. Like you I have thought of complaining, buy why?
ReplyDeleteWhat I've noticed the last few years, on one way streets the traffic signals only show in the direction of travel. I'm guessing this happened because some lawyer got up in court defending his wrong-way client and said, "But my client had a green light." So instead of finding some sensible solution, they decided to eliminate the signals in the wrong direction. That'll teach that lawyer.
ReplyDeleteNow if you happen to find yourself traveling the wrong way down a one way street, you will probably have no idea that the intersection you're coming up to is controlled by a traffic signal. You're already drunk, confused or disoriented, what's going to stop you from pulling right in front of fast moving cross traffic. We'll probably have to wait for another lawyer to get up in court and ask, "How was my client to know that he was approaching Western Avenue?"
Jack
And there should be a special place in Hell for Park Ridge & it's asinine vertical signs that are impossible to read if you're going faster than 2 MPH!
ReplyDeleteWhere I grew up, the same signs existed. They were already quite old by then, having originally been installed in the 1920s. Many of them were broken and crumbling, after decades of exposure to the elements. So they were replaced with standard metal street signs (black-and-white ones ) in the 1960s. I can't believe that Park Ridge STILL has them. They're awful...and they're ugly.
DeleteMy friend crashed into a highway guardrail for cars and then complained the county sent her a bill to replaced the deformed steel safety device.
ReplyDeleteShe was cute TV reporter who has since hit the wall. So there's that.