Page:Traffic Signs for Motorways (1962).pdf/45

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

permitted to stop. The motorway symbol, cancelled, would have been ideal for this purpose, but, as we cannot recommend the new international symbol, we recommend the worded sign illustrated in figure 53. The corresponding signs on the slip road out of the service area back to the motorway, showing where the Regulations again become effective, should be those we have recommended in paragraph 61 and illustrated in figures 10 and 12. Standard 'No Entry' signs should be used to prevent traffic attempting to rejoin the motorway by the wrong slip road.

143. The approaches to highways maintenance compounds and/or police posts from the motorway will be similar in appearance to the approaches to service areas and to road junctions, and signs will be necessary at the beginning of their deceleration lanes to make it clear that the slip road leads only to such places. We recommend a sign with the legend 'Works unit only' (figure 54) for this purpose. A route-number confirmatory sign, of the type recommended in paragraph 67 and illustrated in figure 14, should also be erected on the left-hand verge of the motorway just beyond the slip road.

'Bend' Signs

144. Until the motorway construction programme is completed there are bound to be individual lengths of motorway which are scheduled for eventual extension but which for the time being end at junctions with all-purpose roads which will ultimately be merely intermediate junctions along the finished motorway. It is almost inevitable that one or other of these junctions, which now serves the whole of the motorway traffic at that particular point but which will finally serve only a proportion of it, will be somewhat substandard compared with a junction designed and constructed as a terminal junction from the outset. Thus, at what is at present a terminal junction, the motorway may follow the route of what will eventually be merely an exit slip road, and may therefore describe a curve sharper than could normally be tolerated on such a high speed road . A sign will clearly be necessary to draw attention to this hazard, and we recommend the sign illustrated in figure 55; it should be sited on each side of the carriageway some 400 yards in advance. It is similar in pattern to the continental sign, but in view of its nature we think its colour scheme should be similar to that of the emergency signs described in paragraph 79 and the sign giving warning of merging traffic described in paragraph 113-a reflectorised white symbol on a plain red ground within a reflectorised red border.

'Road Narrows' Signs

145. The present northerly terminal of the London-Yorkshire Motorway is an example of a junction where the motorway takes the route of what will ultimately be only an exit slip road. At this point the motorway narrows fairly abruptly from a three-lane to a two-lane carriageway, and a warning sign will obviously be necessary here too. We recommend the sign illustrated in figure 56; its colour scheme is similar to that of the emergency signs described in paragraph 79 and it should be sited some 400 yards from the point where the road begins to narrow.

32