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New Retroreflectivity Requirements

Status of MUTCD Compliance Dates Rulemaking

As of early 2012, the FHWA is in the process of reviewing the following information and may make changes by the summer of 2012. In the summer of 2011, there was enough national reaction to a plan to create certain deadlines for sign reflectivity for all types of roadway signs. On August 31, 2011, FHWA published a proposed amendment that was open to public comment until October 31, 2011. FHWA is still reviewing all of the public comment.

For more information, please view the FHWA letter dated 1/20/12 with this information (PDF format).

The National MUTCD

The National MUTCD, which is the standard for all roads open to public travel in Maine and every state, has some important dates that Maine towns and cities need to be familiar with relative to its signing.

  • By January 2012, all agencies have to establish a sign assessment or management method that is designed to maintain retroreflectivity at or above established minimum levels.
  • By January 2015, all agencies must have replaced all of their regulatory, warning, or ground-mounted signs (except street name signs) that fail to meet the minimum levels.
  • By January 2018, all agencies must have replaced all of their street name signs or overhead signs that fail to meet the minimum levels.

All the details can be found in the following link which even includes some audio narrative to provide better clarity:

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/night_visib/retrotoolkit/

ATSSA developed a website dedicated exclusively to the sign retroreflectivity implementation period. The new site houses press releases, letters to newspaper editors, fact sheets, videos from ATSSA, links to enable you to post comments to the federal docket and much more. Information continues to be added and updated frequently. For more information, please visit the ATSSA website

It’s important to understand that compliance with this standard is achieved by having an assessment method in place even though some individual signs do not meet the minimum levels at a certain point in time.

The MaineDOT Traffic Division has chosen the Management Method entitled “expected sign life”. Typically this means that individual signs are labelled to mark the date of fabrication or installation.