The development and evaluation of alternative designs for the Texas Farm-To-Market route marker

Abstract

This thesis documents the development and evaluation of alternative designs for the Texas Fann-to-Market (FM) Highway route marker. Previous research by the Texas Transportation Institute has shown that some portion of the driving population has difficulty in reading the FM route marker specified in the Texas Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Therefore, alternative designs were developed in this research to improve the legibility of the FM route marker. The current FM route marker and six alternative designs were tested on a sample of 70 motorists from the Bryan/College Station community. Four laboratory tests were used to assess the effectiveness of the FM route marker designs. These tests were the glance legibility test, filtered identification test, reaction time test, and preference test. The intent of using these tests was to evaluate the effectiveness of the sign designs from a legibility standpoint. The results of this testing supported previous research that some drivers had difficulty in reading the current FM route marker. Five of the six alternative designs consistently performed more effectively than the current FM route marker design. In particular, one of the alternative designs was found to be the most effective of the seven designs tested under laboratory conditions. A statistical analysis of the data showed this alternative design to be significantly more legible than the current FM route marker in each of the four tests.