ELONGATED TRANSPORT MEDIUM ROAD MARKINGS

Tue, 4 Mar 2025 12:31:31 GMT

As users of this forum will be well aware, road markings such as “BUS LANE” and “SLOW” that are meant to be read from a moving vehicle utilise elongated legends first prescribed in TSRGD over 60 years ago and now found in TSRGD 2016 Schedule 17 Part 7 (and S17-8 for 2.8m legends). The prescribed font is Transport Medium, elongated in the longitudinal direction, keeping the transverse dimension unchanged.

As the Traffic Signs Manual points out, this makes it easier for a driver to read the legend.

Arising from a survey of bus lane signs and marking I was recently asked to undertake, I queried why the legends are no longer being installed in the prescribed fonts. A road marking contractor’s response was that installing “letters & numbers to TSRGD would be operationally difficult due to the materials, tools & methods used for setting out and installing road markings”. It is not clear how these have changed over time. I was also advised that RSMA guidance is now to set out fixed widths of 500mm for every letter (600mm for W) and 100mm gap between each, rather than using the tile widths in Table 11-2 in TSM Chapter 5. Despite the latter being narrower than 600mm for most characters, the claim was that this makes it easier to fit a legend within the available lane width.

It is also notable that the elongation of the characters now being marked tends to be applied to their longitudinal elements, with the transverse parts of the character not being elongated, thereby saving a significant amount of thermoplastic. Frequently the letter “E” is marked not only with three transverse elements much narrower than prescribed but with the middle one shorter as well.

Google Street View imagery suggests that the prescribed markings have not been installed anywhere in Britain over the last 10 years or so (ie. from a time before DfT reinforced the prescribed markings in the current versions of TSRGD and TSM) and I note that some CAD packages now seem to use RSMA lettering rather than the DfT’s. It’s likely that many highway professionals will not have seen a ‘real life’ elongated road marking installed on a road (or even refurbished) as prescribed, at any point in their career.

Discussion point: does it matter that TSRGD prescribed markings are no longer being adhered to? Perhaps it’s time DfT stopped prescribing specific fonts for road markings. Does it still matter how easy it is for a driver to be able to read a road marking?

Tue, 4 Mar 2025 13:16:52 GMT

So some, (surely not all?!), contractors are too lazy, cheap or ignorant of legal requirements to comply with TSRGD and no one is enforcing said requirements you say?

Colour me completely unsurprised, given the way the industry is going these days.

If RSMA are promoting markings that don't comply with TSRGD, that's disgraceful. One would suggest DfT should be having a word in their corporate shell-like if this is the case.

Tue, 4 Mar 2025 13:57:56 GMT

A common problem, as you say. And don't get me started on speed limit road markings, which almost always have straight sides with the only curves top and bottom, and dodgy hand-created cycle symbols. The only way these are ever right is with preformed markings (or very, very occasionally a particularly skilful and artistic operative).

Tue, 4 Mar 2025 14:13:22 GMT

It is evident that highway authorities have failed to properly monitor contractors' work and I am well aware that they have many other competing pressures (usually budget-related) but my "Google driving" hasn't unearthed any parts of the country where the prescribed markings are still being laid. Indeed my original suggestion that this has only happened over the last 10 years seems to underestimate considerably: here's an example (on a trunk road) from 2008.

Tue, 4 Mar 2025 14:25:31 GMT

Simon, I have had a look at some speed limit roundels - many different shapes, occasionally close to the prescribed version but the characters inside are never, ever, correctly marked!

I can concede that cycle symbols are particularly tricky, without a template or preformed markings, though there are a few sufficiently skilled operatives around but one part of an excuse I was given was that operatives would have to carry templates of all letters and numbers on their vehicles in order for prescribed markings to be provided and that just sounds to me to be more of a training issue!

Tue, 4 Mar 2025 16:32:07 GMT

So they need to carry the templates on the wagon. So what? That's no kind of hardship.

The customer is paying for TSRGD compliant markings. Not something that vaguely looks about right if you squint hard enough.

I think that if a few LA's refused to pay for bodged work, (requiring the contractor to pay for the removal of their bodged work into the bargain), standards would soon increase.

I've no sympathy for these contractors nor LA's that let them get away with it.

Tue, 4 Mar 2025 22:31:58 GMT

It's not just contractors : it's us practitioners as well. You have to have your nose firmly planted in the TSRGD to even notice this kind of thing, let alone do anything about it.

I wonder, though, does it really matter? These kinds of variances are common but are they having a measurable detrimental effect on the function of a road? Are these practices, in fact, showing us that the TSRGD is overly prescriptive to the point of being needlessly pedantic?

There again, the examples that have been shown here demonstrate sloppy workmanship - those number "3"s formed with a zig-zag! And the reinstatement example (well done on finding that one!) shows what could've been achieved by simply laying a few more curves and horizontal lines.

Wed, 2 Apr 2025 10:33:20 GMT

S King, I'm inclined to agree that it doesn't really matter. I have never noticed that the markings do not comply, and my friends do consider me to be fairly pedantic about road signs. Unless there are safety issues with the incorrect font being used I think the TSRGD should be updated to suit. I think updating the TSRGD is important because otherwise we could find that the standards slide to a position we cannot accept, but that update needs to include the contractors to understand what is achievable.

Looking at this from a different angle: roadmarkings are often the poor relation to other works from a H&S point of view. There is/has been an expectation that they'll just go in and do it early hours without organising roadspace let alone temporary signals or closures. I know this is changing and for some of you has changed (I haven't managed roadmarkings in the UK for about 10 years now), but minimising the time the roadmarking crews are at risk working on the network has to factor into the overall safety calculation of whether the current TSRGD font is that critical compared to what we are getting.

Then look at cost - clearly what we are getting is cheaper than maintaining TSRGD fonts. If we had the difference in cost to invest in the network would we really want to spend it there?

Fri, 4 Apr 2025 09:47:45 GMT

Thanks to all who have responded on this topic. Everyone has raised valid points but, after considering them, I retain my disappointment that a lowering of standards across all sectors seems to have led to poor quality work becoming the industry norm. As A Sturrock has pointed out, highway authorities have played a significant role in this by allowing contractors to adopt a cheaper font that doesn't come close to the legal requirements of TSRGD.

Apart from my old-fashioned view that it is important that the traffic signs and road markings on our highways comply with national legislation, I also consider that there are safety issues involved. It might not matter very much how far in advance a driver can spot a bus stop but the failure to provide the correct elongation of the lettering of SLOW, STOP and perhaps even KEEP CLEAR markings, could reduce the time a driver has to react, particularly in wet, dark conditions, when the reduced level of reflectivity of the marking would have the maximum negative impact. At a rough estimate, some letters in the font being widely used have approximately 80% of the surface area that they should so, without any allowance for their misshapenness, there will be significantly less advance visibility. Presumably, someone looked into that back in the late 1950s when the elongated font was under design.

To take the point raised by G Malpas, if the cost saving of using this font had actually been passed on to highway authorities, rather than it being retained as profit for the contractor, we might not want to spend it on better road markings but we could have filled in a heck of a lot of potholes. The road marking industry has put a lot of effort into safety measures and training for operatives; just not so much into maintaining quality of output, in my view.