Tourist information board

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Sign for the Isle of Wight Bus Museum.JPG
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Various tourist information in the form of signposts

A tourist information board (colloquially also tourist information sign , in Switzerland: tourist signalization ) is a traffic sign that is intended to point road users to tourist destinations such as monuments , special landscapes and cultural sites . Internationally, brown signs with white lettering and white pictograms are largely used for this .

history

Fig. 38b: Board for references to rivers (1956–1971)
Figure 38c: Signs for concentration camp cemeteries (1962–1971)
Sign 385 B: Tourist information board (1971–1988)

Tourist information boards on federal and country roads as well as the subordinate roads have been set up in West Germany with Figure 38b (reference to rivers) and Figure 38c (reference to sights) as part of the Road Traffic Act (StVO) since the amendment of 1956 came into force . On the basis of these boards, the Federal Minister of Transport issued a yellow sign for concentration camp cemeteries and memorial sites on September 25, 1962 and published it in the traffic gazette.

With the new version of the StVO from 1971, the 333 × 1250 millimeter large and at that time still yellow boards with black inscriptions were replaced by at least 333 millimeters high and 1000 millimeters wide information boards (signs 385 A, 385 B) with yellow inscriptions on a green background. These green boards, which had to give way to the current brown boards from 1988, can still be found today.

In the mid-1970s, the brown tourist information sign on motorways was first introduced in France . Since then, the idea of ​​pointing tourists to places of interest by means of standardized signage on motorways has spread in many places around the world.

The first such information sign was put up in Germany in July 1983 on the Autobahn 8 and pointed to Teck Castle . Following the French model, the Stuttgart regional council introduced tourist information signs on the motorways in the Stuttgart administrative region for the first time in a pilot project. In the course of 1983 another 14 boards with eleven different motifs (including Löwensteiner Berge , Engelberg , Swabian Alb , Waldenburger Berge ) were installed. The board that refers to Teck Castle today is not the one that was erected in 1983, as it has a different design.

The official introduction of these signs in the Federal Republic of Germany was only issued through a publication in the Verkehrsblatt on July 15, 1988. They were only allowed to appear on motorways “every 20 kilometers at most” and not contain any signposts. The guidelines for tourist signs on roads - RtH 1988 were changed in 2003 (VkBl. 2003 p. 198) and repealed in 2009 with the announcement of the guidelines for tourist signs (RtB)  - 2008 edition, which replace them and which still apply today . The tourist information board is currently listed in the Federal Republic of Germany as sign 386.3 in Appendix 3 (to Section 42, Paragraph 2) of the StVO; next to it there is the sign 386.1 tourist information and the sign 386.2 tourist route . For these signs, § 51 StVO applies a special cost regulation.

Road users have been guided to the tourist destinations in West Germany since 1958 using the white inner-city signposts introduced at the time. Even after the introduction of the brown signposts, these signs have often been used to this day. Corresponding boards and signposts for tourist information regulated by the road traffic regulations, as provided in the Federal Republic of Germany, never existed in the GDR's StVO regulations . There the signage was made locally.

application areas

There are basically three areas of application for tourist information signs:

  • Information boards and signposts draw attention to important tourist destinations in the local area, for example within a town, and direct them there.
  • Travel routes with a special theme, so-called tourist or holiday routes , are marked with the help of uniform signage.
  • Landscapes, cities and regions are announced with information boards, which are mostly located on highways. However, these signs do not serve as signposts.

Design and criticism

In many countries, guidelines for the design and installation of tourist information boards have been established in order to obtain a uniform appearance. In addition to the brown and white coloring, sans serif fonts are usually used on the signs . In Germany “the middle script is used according to DIN 1451 Part 1 'Fonts - Sans Serif Linear Antiqua - General'”, and in exceptional cases also the narrow script. The font height should be "as a rule 280 mm, but at least 245 mm. The lettering may extend over a maximum of two lines of text. ”“ The design of the font is based on DIN 1451 Part 2, Fonts; Sans serif linear antiqua; Verkehrsschrift '. “In contrast, serifs are used in Switzerland to distinguish them from other signs.

In order to improve legibility for tourists, multilingual labeling is possible (such as in Saarland also in French). The pictograms used should be kept simple, yet meaningful and not colored.

Critics complain that the signs often contain too much information and distract the road user from what is happening on the road. Furthermore, the number of tourist information boards is continuously increasing, as less important destinations are increasingly being signposted.

Examples

See also

literature

  • Guidelines for tourist signage (RtB)  - edition 2008. FGSV Verlag GmbH, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-939715-81-8 (these guidelines replace the ones published in the traffic gazette of March 11, 2009 (VkBl.-VI, Issue 7/2009, p. 228) repealed guidelines for tourist information on roads - RtH 1988 (changed in 2003) (VkBl. 2003 p. 198)).

Web links

Commons : Tourist Information Signs  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Signs for concentration camp cemeteries . In: Verkehrsblatt , Issue 19, 1962, p. 539.
  2. ^ "Signs on the Autobahn - Info brown-white" from August 11, 2006 at Spiegel-Online
  3. ↑ Teckbote: The Teck was a trendsetter for a special “sheet metal avalanche”. August 27, 2019, accessed September 30, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Preliminary guidelines for tourist information on roads - RtH 1988 - . In: Verkehrsblatt . 13, 1988, No. 115, p 488 (these policies were in 2003 changed (VkBl 2003 S. 198) and in 2009 with the announcement of their replacements. Guidelines for tourist signs (RtB)  - Output Repealed in 2008).
  5. ↑ Detlef Dresslein: Signpost on the roadside. In: ADAC Motorwelt, 2, 2014, pp. 74–78; here: p. 76.
  6. ^ Discourse: On the German Autobahn. About the strange effect of “tourist information” . In: Deutsche Bauzeitung. Trade journal for architecture and construction technology , 1, 1999, p. 52.
  7. ↑ Currently regulated by the guidelines for tourist signs (RtB)  - edition 2008 (FGSV Verlag GmbH, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-939715-81-8 , pp. 14 and 16 (which the traffic gazette announcement of 11. March 2009 (VkBl. VI, Issue 7/2009, p. 228) repealed guidelines for tourist information on roads - RtH 1988 (amended 2003) (VkBl. 2003 p. 198) replace)), previously regulated by the design and execution of Traffic signs (In: Straße und Autobahn , Heft 4, 1980, p. 287.) and writing for road traffic according to DIN 1451 (In: Verkehrsblatt 1981, No. 238, p. 448.)
  8. ^ Criticism about tourist information signs at Kulturfahrt-Deutschland.de