The DFT estimated the cost as £560M-£640M in 2005 (mostly labour costs; signs themselves were £269m, of which speed limits about £150m), and by 2009 they were allowing £760M for it.KrisW wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 11:36 On metrication, cost isn’t really the problem: this isn’t as expensive as you’d think. For reference, Ireland’s speed-limit metrication cost €10 million in 2005 (£7M at the time, equivalent to £10 M now) - €5 M to change/erect 35,000 speed-limit signs, and as much again on a public awareness campaign; even if you assume that the UK (with 13x the population, but more bigger cities) would have at least 30~40x the number of signs to replace that Ireland had in 2005, you still only have a cost of £40 million to swap over, including the cost of a bigger public information campaign.
The bigger logistical problem is that the UK still signposts distances in miles and yards, and unless that was also planned to change, there’s no real logic to changing the speed signs, except as a courtesy to European visitors. Ireland’s speed-limit change came at the end of thirty years of using only km distances on new signage. Unlike the distances, the speeds had to be changed in one day.
I'm not sure how you multiply £7M by 30~40 and end up with £40M.