Signs are a marker of your business or organization’s identity and professionalism. They also serve as a terrific way to advertise your business and its location. While exterior signage is important, interior signs are useful to your employees and customers for a multitude of reasons. Campbell’s Signs of Texas produces a wide range of custom […]
TxDOT developed the City Pride Sign Program to give cities the opportunity to display the names and logos of their civic organizations along state highways without interfering with official highway signs.
Community Wayfinding Signs
Community wayfinding guide signs are part of a coordinated and continuous system of signs that direct tourists and other road users to key civic, cultural, visitor, and recreational attractions and other destinations within a city or a local urbanized or downtown area.
Important Things To Know About TxDot Approved Wayfinding Signs
Vehicle Traffic Wayfinding:
Because regulatory, warning, and other guide signs have a higher priority, community wayfinding guide signs shall not be installed where adequate spacing cannot be provided between the community wayfinding guide sign and other higher priority signs. Community wayfinding guide signs shall not be installed in a position where they would obscure the road users’ view of other traffic control devices. 07 Community wayfinding guide signs shall not be mounted overhead.
The basic requirement for all highway signs, including community wayfinding signs, is that they be legible to those for whom they are intended and that they be understandable in time to permit a proper response. Section 2A.06 contains additional information on the design of signs, including desirable attributes of effective designs. Guidance: 26-word messages should be as brief as practical and the lettering should be large enough to provide the necessary legibility distance.
Pedestrian wayfinding:
Because pedestrian wayfinding signs typically use smaller legends that are inadequately sized for viewing by vehicular traffic and because they can provide direction to pedestrians that might conflict with that appropriate for vehicular traffic, wayfinding signs designed for and intended to provide direction to pedestrians or other users of a sidewalk or other roadside area should be located to minimize their conspicuity to vehicular traffic. Pedestrian wayfinding signs should not be retroreflective.
Some Lettering Size Guidelines:
Lettering on post-mounted Street Name signs should be composed of initial upper-case letters at least 6 inches in height and lower-case letters at least 4.5 inches in height. 05 On multi-lane streets with speed limits greater than 40 mph, the lettering on post-mounted Street Name signs should be composed of initial upper-case letters at least 8-inches in height and lower-case letters at least 6 inches in height. Option: 06 For local roads with speed limits of 25 mph or less, the lettering on post-mounted Street Name signs may be composed of initial upper-case letters at least 4 inches in height and lower-case letters at least 3 inches in height.
Cities, counties and private contractors, more and more, are finding themselves working with TxDOT when putting up wayfinding signage or when modifying guide signs. The rules and regulations that govern what type of signs, what materials and what graphic elements are allowed can be confusing. Additionally, getting your design approved through the TxDOT Submittal process requires a very specific set of drawings that detail: colors, fonts, spacing, borders and materials used.
TxDOT Submittal Process Overview
With over half a century of experience providing signage on TxDOT projects, Campbell’s can help you get your signs drawn up and made to TxDOT standards. We have done literally thousands of sign submittals and gotten all of them approved for signs going in TxDOT’s right of way.
TxDOT is looking for a few very specific details when reviewing TxDOT submittals for signs.
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- The overall sign size. Usually, the outside dimensions must be in 6 inch increments.
- The font type and size. These are usually guided by the TMUTCD and the Standard Highway Sign Designs for Texas (SHSD)
- Element spacing.
- The border size and placement.
- The color of the background and color of the legend and border.
- Finally, the materials to be used in manufacturing the sign. These need to meet the Material Requirements that govern the particular sign.
All of these are laid out in a one page drawing per sign and emailed to the customer or directly to the TxDOT engineer responsible for the area.
TxDot Submittal Approval Timeline
You should expect that the engineer will need three to eight working days to review and either approve the drawings or send them back with notes for the modifications that they would like to see.
It’s very rare that this process takes more than two tries. In fact, most of our drawings are approved on the first go. Occasionally, especially when the signs have logos involved this process may take two or three tries. Also, the TxDOT engineers sometimes get busy and there can be a delay in getting the drawings back from them or they may need multiple people to sign off on them, for the most part though, they are very prompt. You should plan on this process taking from three to four weeks from the start of drawings until final approval.
TxDOT Sign Submittals are an important part of getting your signs approved for placement in TxDOT right of ways. They help TxDOT maintain the look and feel of the information systems on their roadways and insure that the signs will perform as required and hold up to our harsh Texas weather.
Campbell’s Signs of Texas
