Last week, there was news posted on this board of a brand new British road sign, viz., '19 mph', due apparently to conversion from a metric 30 km/h to Imperial.

Now a Mr D.B. from Little Clacton has contacted ARM with reports of a sighting of two new road traffic signs either side of the village of Little Bromley, in north-east Essex near Manningtree (on the road to Lawford).

The signs say:

"No footway for 600 metres approx."

I know of no regulation, direction or variation in the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 1994 that permit the word 'approx.' on a British traffic sign.

So unless the Council concerned has gone through a complex procedure to obtain special written permission from the Secretary of State for Transport to erect them, these signs are illegal because they have used two consecutive illegal words:

1. 'metres' is illegal

2. 'approx.' is illegal.

This appears to be the work of Tendring District Council yet again, who have been guilty of a number of previous illegalities (see other threads under 'Metric Transport Signs')

My goodness these train spotters, oops I mean sign spotters, are everywhere!

Using the provisions of Section 131(2) Highways Act, 1980, these two signs 'placed unlawfully on the highway' have been removed and Tendring District Council informed

There's an entertaining report of the removal of these illegal road signs in this week's 'Clacton Gazette', under the heading: "Campaigner Targets Signs". It's accompanied by a photograph of a member of ARM, in trademark high visibility yellow jacket and Health-and-Safety hard hat, in the act of removing the sign. I don't have a URL for the article yet.

At the end of the article there is the usual official spokesman admitting that the sign is illegal and, in line with the approved mantra, blaming it all on an 'unfortunate oversight'.

The authority is not asking for its illegal signs back so our wide-ranging stock of illegal metric signs continues to grow

I've now been sent a copy of the 'Clacton Gazette' report and thought I would share this quote from Mike Page, Public Relations Manager for Tendring District Council, which appears right at the end of the article (after he concedes that road traffic signs on the highway must be in Imperial):


"Mr Page said that with other signs - such as those giving distances to the toilets at Martello Bay - it was very much down to each department to decide whether they were in metric or Imperial and there were likely to be some of each"

Tony for goodness sake. Are really so obsessed that you can't at least conceded that signs giving directions to toilets ought not to be caught up in this silly argument about traffic signs.

I await your bog standard reply.

Pedestrian signs are traffic signs. Where they are pointing is not relevant.

BWMA:

In the words of John McEnroe "You cannot be serious!"

This exchange reminds me of an incident at lunch-time on the day we amended 122 metric signs in Ely - 10 November last year.

Just seconds after we had finished amending a set of signs by the river, an elderly couple emerged from the nearby car park and looked up at our amended signs.

The lady said to her husband: "Look, George, there's some toilets that way in a couple of hundred yards".

As the previous distance said '180m', I'm not sure what might have been said if that had remained in place