Maggie's Farm

The sign issue was interesting to me because I just finished a book, "The Big Roads" by Earl Swift.
As Tom points out, above, the earliest roads were all privately funded and maintained. In fact, they likely would've remained that way except the road signs were so difficult to follow! Eventually the clubs and car manufacturers got together and basically petitioned the government to intervene, presumably to bring order from chaos.

They may have had this as their primary motive. I still think it was a way for auto manufacturers to get something they desperately needed on the cheap. Realizing they couldn't keep funding the huge amount of paving required, why not force people to pay via taxation? (that's how I see the conversations occurring)

The eventual product was the Interstate Highway System - which was NOT started by Eisenhower or even suggested by him. No, plans for this were in the works many years before he arrived on the scene. He was just president when the funds were freed up, and that was no sure thing, either!

The by-product, of course, was the signage. When you read the story of exactly how and why signs were designed the way they are, you'll no doubt marvel at the intelligence applied. The colors chosen, the numbers applied, and the logos designed were all done in what was about as scientific a fashion as might be expected for that era. No doubt if we were building these roads today, the signs in that article would be considered great ideas and become standard. But the reality is the current signs are actually pretty darn good, and chosen for some very specific reasons which still make sense today.

Do drivers sometimes find them confusing? Of course! But even if we made the signs more modern and easier to understand, some people would still not understand them. Everyone processes information slightly differently, we can't develop a signage system that is 100% foolproof.

I think the current signs are pretty darn effective. Why change them? The only reason I can think of is the reason a good friend of mine who runs an engineering firm told me. He sells stuff to the government. As he said, "some of what I put out isn't ever going to find much real use in the world, but the government pays for it and it's a good living. I see many of their orders as a make-work program." Well, that's what changing signs would be.

Millions on design and architecture, billions on the labor and manufacture of new signs. Millions more on classes to teach the new signs.

A perfect example of what Bastiat would call "The Broken Window Fallacy". Except what they'd be replacing ain't broken.