Page:Traffic Signs for Motorways (1962).pdf/14

 Advisory Committee on Traffic Signs for Motorways Final Report

To the Right Hon. Ernest Marples, M.P., Minister of Transport

1. We were asked: 'To consider and advise the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what traffic signs should be provided on the new motorways.' We have interpreted our terms of reference as covering not only the signs needed on the motorways themselves, but also those needed on all-purpose roads for the guidance and direction of traffic wishing to join the motorways. '

2. We made an interim report to your predecessor in October, 1958. The problem of signposting dual carriageway roads without level intersections, many of them carrying three lanes of traffic in each direction and all designed for speeds of 70 m.p.h. and restricted to certain classes of traffic, is entirely new in this country, and we thought it desirable that before making final recommendations we should have the opportunity of seeing the effect of provisional proposals under working conditions. The opening of the short length of the Preston By-Pass some twelve months in advance of the first section of the London-Yorkshire Motorway provided such an opportunity. Treating the traffic signs on the By-Pass as a sort of pilot scheme was in keeping with your predecessor's policy of regarding the By-Pass for the first year as an experimental length on which to try out what rules, regulations and devices might be most appropriate for the motorway system generally in this country, and our interim report was accepted on that basis.

3. We have since been able to see the signs on the Preston By-Pass for ourselves, and we have also invited the representative organisations listed in Appendix I (see also paragraph 7) to comment on them in the light of experience. Generally speaking the consensus of opinion appears to be that the signs are satisfactorily designed for their purpose, but as a result of our own inspection and of the comments we have received there are a number of relatively minor modifications which we incorporate in our recommendations.

4. The signs now in place on the London-Yorkshire Motorway have been designed in accordance with our recommendations as thus modified. We have used the interval between the opening of the first section of that motorway and the submission of this report, however, to observe the effectiveness of the signs on a full-size motorway and, in the light of our observations, to make one or two very slight further modifications in our recommendations. The advice that