From Kyle P. Hoger:
Mexico's highway numbering system leaves a lot to be desired.
Forget for a moment that alternate routes, business routes, and
the like all share the same number, and just take a look at the
shields themselves. First of all, federal highway shields are too
similar in appearance to state highway shields. Changing
that, however, would be a huge undertaking, because it's a
uniform system across the whole country; that is, every state
uses the same blanks. Secondly, the highway department, just as
in the U.S., has a nasty habit of getting state shields and
federal shields mixed up when they put up the signs. These two
faults, however, aren't that big of a deal, by which I mean
you're not going to end up on the wrong road because of it.
The big problem I've found in Mexico, though, is the toll roads.
The free road from Tepic to Guadalajara, for example, is
supposedly number 15, and the toll road is supposedly number
15-D. Why D? Who knows? I've probably spent a total of two hours
trying to Google the answer, and I still have no idea. On
Mexico's current highway shields, the "D" is just a
tiny afterthought, stuck way down there in the bottom corner. ;At
night, or flying down the highway at 120 km/h, it's very easy to
miss, and you might end up on the wrong road. And, of
course, that's assuming the highway department used the right
sign. My suggestion is to make the toll road shields a
different color. Drivers wouldn't have to strain their eyes to
look for the little "D", and the highway department
would probably do a better job if the signs were
color-coded. In my federal highway example (190-D), I used
the current shape, replaced "MEXICO" with
"CUOTA" (which means "toll"), left the little
"D" for kicks, and changed the color to Wyoming
yellow. There aren't many state toll roads in Mexico, but
they do exist; for Puebla highway 438-D, I again used the current
shape and left the little "D" at the bottom, again
changed the color to Wyoming yellow, and replaced
"PUEBLA" with "CUOTA".
Now if we could only get them to use different numbers for
alternate and business routes, driving in Mexico would be a
cinch!
From Albert Calis: A similar design to the existing Mexican shield, only moved the MEXICO name to the bottom above the number, and placed the Mexican flag on the top banner of the shield.
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This page last edited Wednesday, January 23, 2008