"How would you resign from Miles to Km." Topic

Intellectual exercise

Imagine you are put in charge of changing from road-signage being converted from miles to Km

(Not interested in any naysayers, or people saying 'I'd sabotage it' etc especially if you don't use proper gallons anyway, so please don't block the thread)

How would you do it? You almost certainly won't have the resources to do all of it everywhere over night, so you would need to do it graduated method.

It needs to be clear which areas are still measuring in miles, and which have converted.

How would you do it?

Don't switch at first – supplement – put your new signs up as "16km (10 miles)" etc. for quite a long time, and when *those* need replacing from natural wear and tear, put up km only – by which time people have had time to get used to it.

@Dom – that sounds like what happened in Canada when we made the switch. I have vauge childhood memories of dual signs, even for speed limits.

David S.

next you tell me you buy beer by the half litre…

Dom, that was my initial thoughts but I am thinking about speed limits as well – you need to understand quickly Is the kmh sign different (not black on white, red border in the UK)?

Make it part of the phased maintenance. I would assume there is an ongoing project to check and fix signs, so when the signs are scheduled for maintenance, look up the change, get the right numbers to the maintenance team, and let them do it.

This approach is slow, but it guarantees full coverage and leverages existing expenses (we were sending guys out to check signs on the A4 today, anwyay, so …).

As far as clarity goes, that really is in the control for the people who set standards for the signs. That is, the standard that defines how the sign looks should take into account ease of reading for people who will be in areas with km and miles on signs. If there is no method for easy differentiating yet, you could recommend an alternate color scheme for the new markings (km).

Such a change should also be accompanied by an education campaign. Including the information with annual vechical registration renewals is probably a good method. Again, you are already going to send everyone some communication (letter, email, etc.) to renew, just add this extra bit in with it.

Placement on the sign is the way to go with differentiation. It's usually a bad choice to use color to indicate things due to the various color blindnesses.

I remember seeing signs in the US that had the miles to a certain destination, the kilometers, and the conversion (1 mile =1.6 kilometers). I think that was back when I was a kid and there was a push to switch.

But what about the cars, Cars in the US and UK have speedometers in miles, so even if you slowly face out the miles pr. hour signs, there will be a moment when all signs are in km/h and still large portion of the population drive cars with miles/h on the speedometer.

"Cars in the US and UK have speedometers in miles"

My UK speedos have (always) been in both miles and km.

Useful when driving on the continent.

No idea about US cars, I never checked when I was in one.

The conversion is easy enough to do though, multiply by 1.6 so 30mph = 48kmph.

Illinois had dual signs for several years but they are mostly gone now and we are still using miles instead of kilometres.

The real problem in changing is getting each state to agree to it. The Feds can control signage on Federal highways but the individual states control all other road signage in their states. And the switch to kilometer is a political football in the U.S. The attempt in the 89's failed simply because people wouldn't accept it.

Every car I've ever had has had a speedometer that reads both MPH and KmPH, starting with my '77 Pontiac Astre.

Do it overnight, but have a memorable jingle for the conversion rate :

YouTube link

forget the conversion. it isnt needed and exasperates those against the change. move the signs to reflect whole number distances. anything less will result in a political situation an \d death to the program.

In the UK, we still use miles but have gone over to litres in volume. So you buy petrol in litres but still talk about how many miles per gallon you get….

The real problem is the gradual phasing in of driving on the right.

I think you insert an interim step to make acceptance easier: First you put up signs that alternate between furlongs, leagues, and li, some using fractions, some decimals, but no whole numbers. When people scream you explain that nothing can be done. Then you put up the "10km (6 miles)" signs and everyone is so relieved that they all live happily ever after.

Just do it and don't tell anyone. The tickets alone would help the budget.

As a fellow Brit the answer is obvious. Do it in Scotland first. Scotland is like that bit of wall behind the furniture, you can try things out there and if they don't work it doesn't really matter. That's why they had the Poll Tax before us.

In the US. Start from the border and work inwards. I-19 south of Tucson is signed in Km. Do the same from Canuckistan and meet in the middle.

" you could recommend an alternate color scheme for the new markings (km)."

But the problem then is that black symbols, white background, red circle is the indicator for ALL instruction signs.

And now speed signs won't match…

Canuckistan?

That's how it was done here in Canuckistan, if I remember. Two sets of signs for a bit and eventually the imperial ones were removed. Worked fine.

As for Canuckistan see Pat Buchanan's comments here:

link