Fractions on Route Confirmation Signs

[Brigham]

Plenty of fractions, but how many exist giving Miles/Furlongs?
I only know of one.

[Berk]

Plenty of fractions, but how many exist giving Miles/Furlongs?
I only know of one.

I bet it wasn’t made in the 20. Century (or this one, come to that).

Besides, a furlong is just another name for 1/8 -mile (or 200m, if you’re going to be like that ).

[Berk]

As said elsewhere, since 1994, distances over 3 miles do not get fractions.

The old signs posted in here are some classics though.

If we take that as read, by the same token the ‘part-mile’ could be expressed as a decimal. But it isn’t - why not?? .9 miles is best part of a whole mile. You’ll need nearly as much time, or petrol to cover that much distance.

I’ve seen part-k’s many times in France, but strangely not really anywhere else (even Ireland, come to that).

[Bryn666]

Normal rounding rules apply. Less than a half mile and you round down, over half you round up.

So 3.3 would be signed as 3 and 3.6 signed as 4.

There's a very old clearway sign on the A675 that reads 4.04 miles.

Utterly silly.

[Chris Bertram]

If we take that as read, by the same token the ‘part-mile’ could be expressed as a decimal. But it isn’t - why not?? .9 miles is best part of a whole mile. You’ll need nearly as much time, or petrol to cover that much distance.

It's traditional for vulgar fractions to be used for imperial units, where sub-units aren't used. For miles, that means miles + 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 on the road, miles and furlongs on the turf and miles and chains on the railways. We *could * use miles + yards, but with a yard being 1/1760 of a mile, you'd end up with large numbers in the yards column. Familiarity with furlongs and chains is a bit of a niche interest, so we use vulgar fractions instead.

Those poncy decimal places are a damned foreign invention, best reserved for the awful metric system A problem with using them with the imperial system is that they rarely coincide with the unit to sub-unit ratios. Only furlongs to chains is 1:10 as far as I can remember, elsewhere you have 1:3 (yd/ft), 1:4 (pint/gill), 1:8 (gallon/pt and cwt/st), 1:12 (ft/in), 1:14 (st/lb), 1:16 (lb/oz) and 1:20 (pt/fl oz and ton/cwt), and I've probably forgotten one or two others.

[AndyB]

Normal rounding rules apply. Less than a half mile and you round down, over half you round up.

So 3.3 would be signed as 3 and 3.6 signed as 4.

There's a very old clearway sign on the A675 that reads 4.04 miles.

Utterly silly.

Before anyone objects, the chances of an RCS being precisely 3 miles and 880 yards from the centre of the village named on the sign is pretty much... nil.

[vlad]

Plenty of fractions, but how many exist giving Miles/Furlongs?
I only know of one.

I know of a fingerpost giving miles and furlongs but can't think of an RCS.

[Berk]

Like I say, eighths of a mile aren’t that commonly used - even though it’s half a quarter.

It’s usually within seeing distance in a straight line too.