Dodgy signage

parsi · 12-03-2005 11:50pm #1

Was on a roundabout going from N3 to M50 (I think) yesterday and noticed a sign for the Zoo . It was a standard brown sign errected by the local authority. What struck me was the Irish translation - Zu/ .

Is this another example of mockya Irish as I thought tehre wasn't any Z in the Irish alphabet ...

Our man in Havana · 13-03-2005 3:11pm

No Z in the old alphabet. Under the standardised script the letter Z is a valid letter. Otherwise they would have to call it "animal house" in irish.

http://www.englishirishdictionary.com/

seamus · 13-03-2005 3:22pm

Bond-007 wrote:

Otherwise they would have to call it "animal house" in irish.

...A phrase already reserved as the Irish for "Mountjoy".

spacetweek · 13-03-2005 4:33pm

parsi wrote:

Was on a roundabout going from N3 to M50 (I think) yesterday and noticed a sign for the Zoo . It was a standard brown sign errected by the local authority. What struck me was the Irish translation - Zu/ .
Is this another example of mockya Irish as I thought tehre wasn't any Z in the Irish alphabet ...

I was told in school that the Irish for zoo was "Sú". There's no Z in Irish.

gurramok · 13-03-2005 5:54pm

One of the more dangerous ones are the signs as you leave the M7 onto the M9.
About 7 signs erected in the middle of split of the motorway gives the impression that the placenames(waterford, carlow etc) are on left turn immediately ahead when in fact they are not.
I was fooled by these, so I moved into left hand lane expecting a left turn further on !
Anyone who travels at the above split will know where I mean.

parsi · 13-03-2005 7:03pm

Bond-007 wrote:

No Z in the old alphabet. Under the standardised script the letter Z is a valid letter. Otherwise they would have to call it "animal house" in irish.

http://www.englishirishdictionary.com/

Harrumph... there wasn't any Z in my day ! Or X ! Or even z or x !

Traffic · 13-03-2005 7:23pm

Plenty of standard Mway signage for this junction (M7/M9)
eg. Signs further back and countdown markers.

murphaph · 13-03-2005 9:40pm

Traffic wrote:

Plenty of standard Mway signage for this junction (M7/M9)
eg. Signs further back and countdown markers.

Unfortunately standard motorway signange is acan of p*ss in Ireland. :mad:

Yoda · 15-03-2005 2:42pm

The letter Z is no stranger to Ireland. You find it in the Book of Kells.

spacetweek · 15-03-2005 11:20pm

murphaph wrote:

Unfortunately standard motorway signange is acan of p*ss in Ireland. :mad:

Nonsense. It's about as good as in other countries - good use of control cities, etc. The only roads in ireland which have poor signage are the Regionals, unclassified back lanes, and city streets.

murphaph · 16-03-2005 1:05am

spacetweek wrote:

Nonsense. It's about as good as in other countries

You're kidding, right? virtually no gantry signs , virtually no illuminated signs , virtually no use of junction numbering , no use of diagramatical signage . I could go on. Control cities are a bare minimum, unless you opt for the US Interstate cardinal points system (which I like, actually).

Victor · 18-03-2005 12:06am

Of course we do have 100,000km of roads compared to the UK's 400,000

UK		Ireland		
Roads  			371,913 km 	100,000km 	

Area 			244,820 sq km 	70,280 sq km	

Pop 			60,270,708 	3,969,558	

Roads / capita		6.17 m		25.19 m	

Roads / sq km		1.52 km /sq km	1.42 km /sq km

murphaph · 18-03-2005 12:57am

Victor wrote:

Of course we do have 100,000km of roads compared to the UK's 400,000

UK		Ireland		
Roads  			371,913 km 	100,000km 	

Area 			244,820 sq km 	70,280 sq km	

Pop 			60,270,708 	3,969,558	

Roads / capita		6.17 m		25.19 m	

Roads / sq km		1.52 km /sq km	1.42 km /sq km

What's that point in response to Victor?

Lennoxschips · 18-03-2005 1:10am

That there are a lot of sheep in Ireland?

I have to say that the signage on the Dutch motorways is better than on the Irish ones, but credit where credit is due, the signage on the Irish national roads is generally better than on the Dutch national roads. So in some areas Ireland is better and in other places worse.

Victor · 18-03-2005 6:56pm

murphaph wrote:

What's that point in response to Victor?

We can't maintain our signs to the same standard (without sacraficing other services) as the UK, simply because we have too many roads and too many signs.

seamus · 18-03-2005 7:15pm

What I always thought in Ireland, was that we put up signs like "Dangerous Junction ahead" or "Narrow Bridge ahead", instead of just fixing the problems!

Flukey · 18-03-2005 7:23pm

Signage is bad in Ireland. For someone who is visiting Ireland, it would be very hard to find your way around. There are hardly any signs along the M50 to the West for example, until you get near the junction itself. There should be signs the whole way along. Us natives might know where we are going, but foreigners looking for the correct junctions would find it a lot harder. Seeing 'Northbound' and 'Southbound' along the M50 is probably also a bit confusing for people looking to travel west. There should be mentions of all the junctions and their primary destinations as you are driving along, not just when you get close to the junction. The M50 is just one example. Many other parts of the country are similar.

Yoda · 18-03-2005 7:32pm

Victor wrote:

We can't maintain our signs to the same standard (without sacraficing other services) as the UK, simply because we have too many roads and too many signs.

Gee, maybe one day Ireland can grow up and be a real country and provide and maintain excellent roadsigns for everyone. Gosh. Estonia manages.

Victor · 18-03-2005 7:53pm

Flukey wrote:

Us natives might know where we are going, but foreigners looking for the correct junctions would find it a lot harder.

The foreigners might actually buy a map.

Yoda · 18-03-2005 8:10pm

Yes, well, maps are another sore point. Why are the rural roads (the yellow ones) not assigned numbers? Well, I've heard that they are. Why are none of them ever identified on the Discovery series maps? Each of them has a junction. A small sign, a metre tall, with the designations on them would help every traveller, foreign or not.

Maps are pretty dodgy though. I'm moving to Lecanvey on 1 May. I've got a bunch of maps, some of which show it, some which don't, including the Road Atlas of Ireland. It's irritating.

Victor · 18-03-2005 8:20pm

Yoda wrote:

Why are none of them ever identified on the Discovery series maps?

Clutter?

I'm moving to Lecanvey on 1 May.

Eh, wheres that.

Edit: found it, also spelt Leckanvy. You do have to admit it isn't exactly a metropolis.

I worked on some houses in Louisburgh years ago that are close enough.

murphaph · 18-03-2005 8:23pm

Victor wrote:

We can't maintain our signs to the same standard (without sacraficing other services) as the UK, simply because we have too many roads and too many signs.

Huh? We don't have enough motorway signs (this point is only about motorway signage!). That's part of the problem. Anyway, what's sign maintenance costs got to do with putting up decent signs to begin with? (which is what this point is all about-a poster stated that irish motorway signage was as good as other countries, I disagreed with him and gave examples why our signage is substandard from installation).

If you are saying that we can't afford decent motorway signs I think that's a pretty silly position to take. We spend x billion on the planning, public consultation, final design, excavations, pavement, bridges and other associated infrastructure and then skimp on a few thousand Euro for decent signage? that clearly makes no sense. as the road needs to be navigable to the end user or it has failed it's most basic purpose.

The additional cost of illuminating roadside signs is marginal (excuse the pun). the additional cost of designing decent diagrammatical signage is negligible. The additional cost of planning all motorway schemes to allow junction numbering is marginal, but we do none of these basic things that go unnoticed everywhere else because they are so banal.

Victor · 18-03-2005 8:41pm

murphaph wrote:

but we do none of these basic things that go unnoticed everywhere else because they are so banal.

Now, now leave the odologists alone.

Yoda · 18-03-2005 8:46pm

Lecanvey is a little west of Murrisk. Which is a little west of Westport. http://www.fallingrain.com/world/EI/20/Leckanvy.html

Lecanvey is more common than Leckanvy, Lecanvy, and Leckanvey, though those occur. Leac an Anfadh is its Irish name, though that should probably be Leac an Anfa now, or at least Leac an Anfaidh.

DublinWriter · 18-03-2005 11:29pm

spacetweek wrote:

Nonsense. It's about as good as in other countries - good use of control cities, etc. The only roads in ireland which have poor signage are the Regionals, unclassified back lanes, and city streets.

I'm just about to vomit with laughter at that statement.

I drove around the London/Surrey area for years in the UK without as much as a map. You'd really want to be cranially challenged over there to get lost.

Here? Try finding your way from A to B, say between two destinations from Cork/Kerry using a 'National' road and you'll need an AA map, an Ordinance Survey map, some pretty sophisticated GPS equipment and perhaps even a flare-gun.

Even the signage on the M50 is rubbish compared to the M25 around London.

DublinWriter · 18-03-2005 11:34pm

Victor wrote:

Of course we do have 100,000km of roads compared to the UK's 400,000

Yes, well, to paraphrase the old Eagle Star ads, there's 'roads' and there's roads.

It used to annoy me when working abroad when Brits/Germans/Belgians used to laugh at some of the Irish roads.

...that was until I had to make my way to a small village just outside Templemore. It appeared as a road on a map, but was basically just two tyre marks in what was a muddy field. I'm not kidding. I've had this experience several times around rural parts of Wexford too.

You wouldn't believe what local authorities would have us believe are roads in this country.

Yoda · 18-03-2005 11:53pm

I don't care how crap a road is. Plenty of dirt roads in Arizona. What I want is them to be named or numbered in some navigable fashion. That is not an unreasonable request in 21st-century Europe. And it would not cost all that much. And even if it did, it would be worth it.

DubTony · 19-03-2005 9:58pm

DublinWriter wrote:

...Try finding your way from A to B, say between two destinations from Cork/Kerry using a 'National' road and you'll need an AA map, an Ordinance Survey map, some pretty sophisticated GPS equipment ...

and that brings up another question. In many other countries you can use a Sat-Nav system to get from door to door anywhere in the country.

It seems here in good ol' Ireland the ordinance survey people want to charge the GPS people astronomical prices for digital maps. So, I believe the GPS people all got together to map Ireland themselves. As a result, only major centres are available.

...so ... no help there then.

Tony

Yoda · 20-03-2005 12:55am

Yes, Ireland's Ordnance [sic] Survey inherited all sorts of wonderful stuff from the British, and selfishly and ignorantly withhold it from useful publication. And it was the Brits who paid for it. Grr.

Dodgy signage

Comments