Mercer County Sign Management

The FHWA proposed updated sign standards in the 2009 Edition of the MUTCD Manual which included more stringent retro-reflectivity requirements for regulatory, warning and guide signs. In response to the FHWA directives, the DVRPC initiated a Local Sign Upgrade and Management Planning Initiative (administered by Mercer County) that was used to develop a systematic program to manage roadway sign inventories. There are approximately 17,000 roadway signs under Mercer County jurisdiction, including signs associated with 20 park drives, 80 parking lots, 4 golf courses, 133 off-system drainage structures, the Trenton-Mercer Airport, school signs on County routes, signs on municipal roads approaching County intersections, and signal mast-arm signs for 200 traffic signal locations.

Taylor Wiseman & Taylor was tasked with (1) Conducting a county-wide inventory of sign location, condition, and physical features; (2) Performing retro-reflectivity measurements on regulatory and warning signs; (3) Creating, from the data collected, a comprehensive and maintainable Sign Inventory Asset Management System compatible with the County’s current ArcGIS software and capabilities; (4) Developing a priority ranking for sign replacement based on the estimated remaining service life; and (5) Summarizing non-compliant signs and proposing corrective measures in a project report. TWT has guided all phases of the GIS process for this project, from geodatabase design, to applications development, data conversion, and lastly, systems integration.