SD: SD 231, SD 445, & SD 473 are unsigned

[mapcat]

No signage of any sort, not even on street blades. The part of SD 231 concurrent with the I-90 business loop has the business loop shields, but that's all.

[the_spui_ninja]

SD 473 has this "SD Secondary" style sign right at the start (unless that's been removed since last year). The issue with this and the other SD unsigned/poorly signed state routes is that they're very well marked on the official map that we give out to tourists up here. I also saw a width restriction sign with an SD 231 shield one summer when DOT was doing work on it.

I changed the topic so that we just cover all of these once and for all. To my knowledge, these are the routes:
SD 153: Unsigned, visible on map
SD 203: Unsigned, not visible on map (ALREADY REMOVED)
SD 248: Unsigned, not visible on map, but all the street blades I've seen say "SD Highway 248" or some variation
SD 251: Poorly signed, visible on map
SD 258: Poorly signed, not visible on map
SD 231: Unsigned except for road work signage, visible on map in both Rapid City and Black Hills insets
SD 445: Unsigned, visible on Rapid City inset.

Point to note, these can become fully signed routes at any time if internal DOT policy changes, with the example being SD 249, one of these types of routes that was fully signed in approximately 2013.

My view is to keep them to avoid questions such as "Why isn't SD ### in the HB?! It's on my official highway map!". Plus, if we get rid of 473, then my avatar makes no sense whatsoever lol (not a valid reason, that sentence was a joke. 473 is one of the prettiest drives in the Hills, and I would definitely recommend it).

[mapcat]

Nothing against 473, for sure. It was a nice drive. I was not looking for a little tag on the back of a stop sign, since not being from there, I was not aware that those were something to look for. If there was still a width restriction sign on 231, I didn't see it. 248 is still only signed on the street blades, but it's signed on every one of them (except possibly in small towns where it might have a local name), and that's why I didn't mention it since that seemed adequate.

[cl94]

How are the dog tags for routes like 473 any different from reference markers in NY, blade shields in NJ, or the nearly identical dog tags in VA? It seems very arbitrary if these routes are included in South Dakota but omitted in other states. If SD 248 is on there, we need to have NY 990V as well because all the blades say "ROUTE 990V".

Personally, I'd be for including all of these, but we need some level of consistency between states.

[formulanone]

South Dakota 251 was signed as such in Gregory:

[Duke87]

How are the dog tags for routes like 473 any different from reference markers in NY, blade shields in NJ, or the nearly identical dog tags in VA? It seems very arbitrary if these routes are included in South Dakota but omitted in other states. If SD 248 is on there, we need to have NY 990V as well because all the blades say "ROUTE 990V".

Personally, I'd be for including all of these, but we need some level of consistency between states.

There was some support for counting VA dog tags when this was last discussed, though this does not appear to have been implemented in the HB.

[the_spui_ninja]

How are the dog tags for routes like 473 any different from reference markers in NY, blade shields in NJ, or the nearly identical dog tags in VA? It seems very arbitrary if these routes are included in South Dakota but omitted in other states. If SD 248 is on there, we need to have NY 990V as well because all the blades say "ROUTE 990V".

Personally, I'd be for including all of these, but we need some level of consistency between states.

There was some support for counting VA dog tags when this was last discussed, though this does not appear to have been implemented in the HB.

My main argument for keeping these in, at least in SD, is that SDDOT on paper makes it very obvious that these routes are the exact same as all the others and then in the field under-signs them for some reason. I had an email exchange with DOT a while back about why 473 was signed the way it is; I'll have to see if I can find that.