I know I will regret it but I am wading back into this again.
First let's deal with this absolute red herring that keeps coming up.
Bomag wrote: ↑Thu Dec 23, 2021 19:45Why sign London when from 100's miles away when almost nobody will travel there - also given how unwelcoming TfL makes it perhaps its a good thing to sign where road users want to go.
RichardA35 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 24, 2021 08:57Not irrelevant, but there is significant flow to other destinations in the SE region (Channel Tunnel, Gatwick, Heathrow, Hammersmith, Watford etc) that reducing London to a single amorphous blob does no one any favours.
I fundamentally disagree with this point. I understand that the current policy ("let's keep the location of our biggest city a secret") is based on this premise, but it is a flawed idea. A sign pointing to "London" from somewhere as far afield as Gatwick Airport or Oxford is not only of use to someone who intends to drive to Trafalgar Square, and nor is it encouraging anyone to take their car inside the Congestion Charge boundary. To claim otherwise is madness. It is a wayfinding and orientation aid that helps you understand where a road goes. If I'm leaving Gatwick Airport and trying to work out which way I need to turn when I join the M23, seeing "London" on the sign when I'm actually heading for Southend is still useful. It tells me which way the road is headed and it tells me it more clearly and more unambiguously than almost anything else you could put on the sign, because London is big and well known and its location in the country relative to other places is extremely well understood. It's certainly going to be better understood and more useful to someone who doesn't know their way than "(M25)" or "Croydon" or "I'm not telling you which city of seven million people is at the end of this road because it's a State Secret".
That isn't an argument against putting "(M25)" on signs from far afield. Many people will be looking for the M25 and signposting it from further away is a good idea. But
replacing London with the M25 on signs is only a sensible idea if you think that writing "London" will only assist people who want to drive to Central London.
Earlier in this thread Bomag gave us an example of navigating to a village off the A55 by following signs first for the M60, then for Chester before finding the A55. In that example you are not intending to arrive at the steps of Chester cathedral - you're not actually going to Chester at all - but seeing Chester on the signs helps you find your way. The same applies for London on signs. More so, in fact, because it's a more recognisable and well-understood location than Chester is. If one of those is good signage practice, and the other is bad, then this policy is a complete double standard.
RichardA35 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 24, 2021 08:57hemsl wrote: ↑Fri Dec 24, 2021 08:08I fear we are stuck on an insistence to define London in the most narrow way possible (Westminster? The City?), rather than the broader definition of London, encompassing 9m residents, that people would generally have in mind when joining a motorway at Banbury.
Yes people are heading in the direction of "London", but very soon they need to make decisions - M25 CW or ACW or stay on M40 - a simple wayfinding strategy ideally giving more detail as you get closer with binary decision points is what is needed and what seems to have been proposed.
...
each decision flows from the last and London as a blob doesn't come into it other than as a substitute for an initial "head onto the M1/M40/M11/M4/M3 etc to the M25" from a long distance away.
Richard, this is exactly what we are all trying to say to you, and I'm so glad you agree. When you are as far away as Banbury, or Oxford, or Cambridge, or Gatwick, then London is exactly the right thing to put on the signs for exactly the reason you state. It is a shorthand for "head this way for everything in Greater London and everything you reach via the M25", and surely any ordinary road user understands that. The decision to turn onto the M25 one way or another comes when you reach the M25, and at that point London as a generic destination vanishes and you get more granular options. Which is what we are all saying
should happen, and what you will find on the ground
does happen, and what you have just said in this quote is the
right thing to happen, and yet which seems to be outlawed by this insane policy decision that you're still trying to defend.
Bomag wrote: ↑Thu Dec 23, 2021 19:45However much people are wedded to signing 'London', the fact that it is the capitol of the UK is not relevant to signs outside the south east.
Lord above, we are talking about signs in the south east. I realise that one of the earliest things mentioned in this thread were signs around Birmingham that pointed to "London" and that is plainly an anachronism; from that far away you could now signpost "The SOUTH" instead. Fine. But once you reach a point where you are
in "The SOUTH", you need to put something else on signs that point towards London.
In the south east region the size of 'London' is often a poor substitute for providing the best route signing to both central London as well as outer boroughs
It depends where you are. If you're already on the M25, or on the final approach to it, then yes, I agree completely. Being specific about Central London or specific primary destinations within Greater London is useful. But you are ignoring the gap between the point where "The SOUTH" ceases to be meaningful or useful, and the point where you can start being specific.
Here's another example. Southbound on the M1, signs for "The SOUTH" end at Milton Keynes. There's no point continuing with them because you are now in the south of England. So the regional destination disappears and there's no other regional destination that could usefully replace it. From that point the forward destinations are London and Luton.
You could, arguably, have "M25" as a forward destination at that point and that would definitely be useful. I'd support it. But what you can't do, 25 miles out from any decision point about whether to take the M25 left or right, is start offering up specific places in London like Heathrow, Brent Cross, Westminster, etc. That would be meaningless. At that distance "London" is a useful identifier for the whole of London.
You will no doubt tell me that the correct forward destinations would be the next two primary destinations, so that at Milton Keynes the signs should actually point to Luton and Dunstable, and then St Albans, and then Hemel Hempstead, and then Watford. That seems like a ridiculous way to signpost a major motorway and relies on road users having far more detailed geographic knowledge - something you keep mentioning - than just "London", which every driver in every vehicle on the M1 will recognise and understand, even if their destination is not in Parliament Square. Nobody heading south on the M1 is seeing "London" and thinking the road will only take them to Central London, and nobody heading south on the M1 is seeing "London" and thinking "gee whiz, I was going to go round the M25 to get where I was going, but now I've seen those signs maybe I'll take the carriage drive through Hyde Park instead".
There comes a point where a policy might be well meaning and well researched but it has become utterly divorced from reality. I think this is one of them. Especially when coupled with the realisation, a page or two back, that it's not a policy you can ever actually use, because every road approaching London requires an exception to be made.