The A 505 westbound dual carriageway has eight countdown warning triangles (Danger - Men at Work) just west of Royston, warning of impending road works.

Until the weekend, there were supplementary signs immediately underneath them (like Transco's in Kent), on the verge and on the central reservation, in pairs, saying:

'800 mtrs.'
'600 mtrs.'
'400 mtrs.'
'200 mtrs'.

After Cambridegshire County Council Highways Department maintained they were legal and refused to remove them, they are now in the ARM store. The legal powers available to ARM supporters to remove them under Section 131(2) Highways Act 1980 were once again used.

They were of plastic construction, each about 4' x 2', black lettering on a white reflective surface, and brand new.

The Council has been informed of their removal, and a formal complaint made about Highways Engineers' ignorance of the law to the Council's Chief Executive.

Should Cambridgeshire County Council not require them to be returned, we have eight quite nice 'art nouveau' wall hangings*, in lightweight plastic and with two convenient rings at each end already inserted to make hanging them easy. If compulsory metrication of our road signs is ever abandoned, they'll be a collectors' item.


* It has also been suggested that they would provide an excellent surface for a game of 'shove ha'penny. We agree, but suggest that if illegal metric signs are used for this game, it should be retitled: 'shove euro'

If I may say something here:
After having read many, many posts on this forum, I must say that I don't understand that you line up with Mr. Bennett.
Tony deprives you of being taken seriously.

Ralf

eh?

Question, and I ask seriously:

Tony, when you say "supplementary" does that mean those signs had indications in yards as well as metres?

Reply to pip:

The regulations governing the erection of warning traffic signs for the road works near Royston are covered both by the New Road and Street Works Act 1991 and the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 1994.

To cut a long story short, the regulations provide that large red warning triangles, with a picture of a man digging (= 'Danger - Men at Work') *must* be erected at suitable intervals (usually laid down in a 'Traffic Management Plan' approved by the local authority, in this case the East Division of Cambridgeshire County Council).

The same two sets of regulations also provide that a supplementary distance indicator, underneath, *may* be added, to provide extra information.

The regulations stipulate that *if* a supplementary distance indicator is used, then it *must* be in yards or miles, but definitely not 'metres' or 'mtrs', as stated of course in the Local Authority Circular of 16 July 2002 sent to all English local authorities by Mr Mike Talbot of the Department for Transport's Traffic Policy Division