I’ve been thinking about road signage and markings this week. Specifically, information which helps drivers with wayfinding at major junctions. Sydney’s customary green signs do an okay job at this, but often drivers are busy keeping their eyes (rightfully, I think) on the tarmac in front of them. And because of this, some of the best wayfinding signage is actually painted onto the road itself. A good example of this is where the M8 splits off from the M5 in Kingsgrove (see the picture below). Each lane is clearly labelled either ‘M5’ or ‘M8’ – unambiguous and effective in helping motorists choose the correct lane.
(source: Google Maps street view)
I think the reason it works so well is because each of these roads has an alpha-numeric designation. Relatively few roads in Sydney have designations such as this, but it’s quite prevalent on main road corridors (e.g. M1, A2, A40, etc). The benefit of this is that the route markers can remain consistent even when the street or road name changes. A great example of this is the A3 road corridor, which runs roughly north-south through the middle of Sydney. Mona Vale Rd becomes Ryde Rd, which becomes Lane Cove Rd, which becomes Devlin St, which becomes Church St, which becomes Concord Rd… hopefully you get the point.
I’d love to be able to say that all of these main roads are well-marked at major junctions – but I’d be lying if I did. Often the customary large green signs are helpful, but the road markings are sadly lacking useful information. For example, on literally the other side of the median strip in the above image, it looks like this…
(source: Google Maps street view)
Well, you probably notice the problem – what on earth is KGR? Keep Going Right? Kill Geoffrey Rush? Of course, KGR stand for King Georges Rd. But if you’re unfamiliar with Sydney, it’s likely you won’t be able to figure this out in the few seconds you have to decide which lane to position your vehicle in. The most frustrating thing about this is that King Georges Rd is part of the A3! That same route I used as an example about how helpful the alpha-numeric designations can be. And yet, someone thought it was helpful to write ‘KGR’ on the road. The irony is that someone who knows that KGR = King Georges Rd probably already knows where they are going and don’t even need to look at the road markings at all! The simple solution is to repaint all of the ‘KGR’s with ‘A3’. It’s much more simple and would be less confusing for most drivers.
Let’s have a look another egregious example… LCT?
(source: Google Maps street view)
Apparently it’s important to know that LCT is short for Lane Cove Tunnel. Not that it’s designated as part of the M2 – or that the A1 route is branching off to the left! There are several examples of this across Sydney where substandard wayfinding makes junctions like these challenging for new and unfamiliar users. The on-road experience could be hugely improved by making some small changes to the way the painted markings are implemented.
The big change I would like to see is painting the alpha-numeric designations on the road surface at all junctions and avoiding acronyms like ‘KGR’ and ‘LCT’.
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