There’s a particular road that has three different road signs (GPS Location 51.778302, -2.033379).
Sign 1:
A blue “Unsuitable for heavy goods vehicles” sign. This would use the below tag, as a blue sign is only a warning – access is not prohibited (see HERE).
hgv=discouraged
Sign 2:
A red circular sign with a lorry and 7.5t (except for loading). This type of sign is usually prohibitive, therefore no goods vehicles over the maximum gross weight (7.5 tonnes) are permitted, except for loading and unloading – and would therefore use the below tags (see HERE).
Sign 3:
This is the sign I don’t know exactly what it means. It’s a red circular sign with a lorry, with no maximum weight specified and is crossed out. Underneath it states “Unsuitable for HGVs”. As it’s a red circular sign, it would usually indicate it’s prohibitive (I.E. hgv=no). However, that does not match the other signs and it almost looks like it could be possibly be a local authority sign.
As sign 3 causes a conflict, I was thinking of only tagging it according to signs 1 and 2, which are very much official highways signs.
However, does sign 3 (possibly local authority, I don’t know) have a higher priority than the other two signs – and therefore it should be hgv=no? Ordinarily, I would expect this sign to be an advisory sign, but in this case as it’s a red circular sign – not blue – does that mean it’s not just an advisory sign and is legally enforceable?
Edit:
Added the below photo showing the road signs. The “Unsuitable for HGVs” sign in the bottom left is professionally made with reflective material and is securely attached to the post.
Local authorities are generally responsible for road signs anyway, but they have to be authorised signs and should be in TSRGD. They can sometimes get permission from DfT for non-standard signs, but I would be very surprised if the one you described was allowed. It was clearly designed by someone who should have failed their driving theory test.
If the road is unadopted and on private land, like an industrial estate or farm access, then landowners can and do put up whatever weird and wacky signs they like, frequently mixing road signs and H&S signage - their property, their rules. It would still mean hgv=discouraged
If it’s a highway maintainable at public expense, the sign has probably been put there (illegally) by a NIMBY annoyed by a belief that HGV drivers are failing to comply with the two real traffic signs. In this case, it has no legal meaning, force, or priority and should really be reported to the highway authority.
You should be able to find out the ground truth for what traffic orders are in force on that road by looking for the application for them in the Gazette. Often (always?) weight restrictions are published there.
You’ll probably want to restrict the search by local authority area and search for the road name. The search function isn’t great, and iirc there’s a cutoff in the 2000s where they changed record format so you have to search everything twice.
Some highway authorities are really bad at publishing traffic orders in The Gazette (which is OSM-compatible as it’s OGL), or anywhere else which is easy to find online. Hopefully the DfT D-TRO (Digital Traffic Regulation Orders) project will eventually make this easier.
The TROs may be on display at the council offices. In a locked filing cabinet, in a disused lavatory, with a sign on the door saying “beware of the leopard”.
In this case, the goods vehicle 7.5t mgw restriction and loading exception sign is unambiguous and it’s probably not worth the effort of trying to find the original TRO to confirm that signage and order match. Advisory signs don’t need TROs and unauthorised signs (assuming this is a public highway) are explicitly prohibited by legislation.
Certainly, but I have found the TROs useful for working out the extents of a weight restriction. Some of the signage on the ones near me is patchy, so it’s not possible to work out on the ground whether certain roads are restricted or not.
Knowing the full extent of the TRO could help in working out whether sign 3 is a home made replacement for an original council sign, and should be tagged as the others (with a note); or whether it’s completely made up and on a road which doesn’t actually have a weight restriction.
Sign 3 is completely made up, by someone whose understanding of UK/Vienna Convention traffic signs is defective at the level of recognising shapes and colours.
Hopefully, but snazzy new data formats supported by no affordable software are the 21st century way to ‘put things on display’ while making sure no one can actually look at them. It makes me wonder if we should start calling them eLeopards.
Is that route data in GTFS? No it’s in TransXchange.
Are the DTROs specially tagged GeoJSON? No they’re their own special thing that theoretically have WKT buried in them if you look hard enough, but nominally the expensive ISO version of WKT not the open standards version.
