You can breathe a sigh of relief!
Many of the traffic sign compliance requirements proposed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in 2009 have been relaxed, delayed or completely eliminated. We wrote about the revised MUTCD standards in November 2011 and referred to the revision document at the FHWA website.
Take a look at this document now! More than half of the proposed changes have been wiped out following the feedback and input FHWA received from its constituents.
Retro-Reflectivity Standards Relaxed
One of the requirements that caused a lot of concern to agencies was the replacement of all types of signs (regulatory, warning, street name, …), if they do not meet minimum retro-reflectivity standards.
This rule was modified significantly. The new rules simply states that you have to Maintain Minimum Retroreflectivity. To do so, you need to implement a management method to accomplish minimum retroreflectivity for regulatory and warning signs only. An inventory of all your traffic signs in a sign management system will certainly satisfy this requirement.
Compliance Deadline Extended
You need to comply with this requirement 2 years after the most recent modification of the 2009 MUTCD document. Based on their webpage, this modification happened on May 11, 2012.
It appears that you still have another 2 years to implement a traffic sign management system. If that’s not enough time for you, please give us a call!
We can help and get you up and running quickly.
Click here for a summary of the new requirements and the related deadlines.
Transmap implemented the City of Irvine CA’s sign management system in less than 3 months – start to finish. Irvine accomplished MUTCD compliance in record time. Now they can manage their 27,000 traffic signs online in ArcGIS.
Substantial Savings through Sign Management
Federal requirements should not be the only reason why you implement a sign management system. It will substantially improve your operations and save you lots of money along the way.
Hillsborough County FL was one of the earliest adopters of asset management for their street network more than 10 years ago. They were able to save $1 million from better sign management alone.
