
On the Road: The Language of Street Markings - prismatic
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n03/alice-spawls/on-the-road
======
amyjess
So, this article is about the UK, but there's one really interesting thing
I've noticed about street markings in the US from looking at a lot of cities
in Google Street View.

California has wildly different street markings from every other state in the
country. The "STOP" and "SIGNAL AHEAD" markings in particular jump out of me.
I've attempted to Google the origins of this, but I've yet to turn up any
reason why California is so different from the rest of the union on this.

Also, it might just be my imagination, but broken lane stripes look like
they're longer and/or thinner in California than in other states.

~~~
jaxx75
I've found that merges in California are also quite different from what I've
experienced on the East Coast. It seems that in California two lanes simply
lose their separating lane stripe and it serves as a merge.

Also, I find California's Botts' Dots[0] insufficient at marking lanes
clearly, but I do like the tactile feedback.

While I'm mentioning gripes with California roads, the freeway/highway
entrance markers just seem to be staked onto the entrance of the on-ramp—and
often, if approaching, the sign is just after the entrance ramp.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botts%27_dots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botts%27_dots)

~~~
amyjess
> Also, I find California's Botts' Dots[0] insufficient at marking lanes
> clearly, but I do like the tactile feedback.

Various municipalities in Texas use them too (called "buttons" here), very
inconsistently. I agree with your assessment; ideally, roads should use both
paint and buttons, but that's not as common as it should be. From poking
around on Street View, it appears that there are a lot of roads in California
that put painted lines over the buttons, but I've yet to see any place in
Texas that does so (except one road in Addison, but they've since removed the
buttons as they're in the process of switching over to paint).

One thing interesting about North Texas is that you can actually tell which
suburb of Dallas you're in, based on not only whether they use paint or
buttons, but also based on how they lay out the buttons. Some examples follow.

    
    
        Legend: - = paint, . = button, ] = reflector
    

Dallas itself uses paint exclusively, with reflectors placed halfway between
the stripes:

    
    
        -------------      ]      -------------      ]      -------------
    

Richardson places the reflectors at the tail end of each set of buttons, as if
the reflector was a button, and they're wildly inconsistent from road to road
about how many buttons constitute a set, as well as the proper spacing between
each button. You get arrangements such as these:

    
    
        ]   .   .   .             ]   .   .   .             ]   .   .   .
    
        ]  .  .  .  .             ]  .  .  .  .             ]  .  .  .  .
    
        ] . . . . . .             ] . . . . . .             ] . . . . . .
    

Plano used to use four buttons, spaced out a decent amount, with reflectors
placed halfway between each set:

    
    
        .   .   .   .      ]      .   .   .   .      ]      .   .   .   .
    

But now they're cramming in a second reflector in the middle of each set of
buttons and tightening the spacing between the buttons a bit. They're
migrating one road at a time to the new system:

    
    
        .  .  ]  .  .      ]      .  .  ]  .  .      ]      .  .  ]  .  .

------
fredley
Sadly my favourite road section to cycle has been altered, here's how it was
in 2012:

[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5259235,-0.1244285,3a,90y,...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5259235,-0.1244285,3a,90y,338.83h,48.29t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_5K-Yftu4mBNzrMLRKrfdA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

------
takk309
For those in the US looking for documentation of road markings, it is found in
the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, better known as the MUCTD. It
is freely available at
[https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/](https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/)

