h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When a signpost says that the distance to a city, say London, is 100 miles, does it refer to the distance to London's city centre, or the distance to the city's boundary?

I think its the distance down the dotted white line of the road to the city boundary. As London is only 1 square mile big, it doesn't make much difference though.

I don't know.
But i do know that a lot of those distances they give must be wrong: I was traveling from Cambridge, towards Norwich to head off into suffolk: we saw a sign saying a distance (i can't remember exactly what it was, but these are examples), said something like Norwich 40 miles, then a few miles on (yes heading in the correct direction), there was another sign saying it was furhter htan 40 miles, as we had traveled for about 10 minutes or thereabouts, but apparently not moved any distance, but in fact moved backwards its even worse if you get some of the old signs as well along the route, it can get quite comical; when i used to cycle a lot down some of the quieter country lanes, you would get the nice new metal signpost things at junctions with larger roads, saying one distance only to find an old wooden one round the corner with a compltely differnt distance on, and often pointing in the wrong direction (i think that was because the sign had been moved round by commedians passing down the same route).

That's the City of London, London Borough as a whole is very widespread. There's a London borough about 5 miles from me, but signposts mark it as 18 miles to London, so I guess that's to the City.

I've always understood that distances from London are measured from Charing Cross.

I've spoken to my dad who is in the London Taxi Drivers Association, and he says it used to be Charing Cross, but he thinks now it's Hyde Park at the Park Lane entrance.

In Israel it kind of differs, and usually the distance to where the city actually starts (not the place where the jurastiction of the city is, but where the houses start.

This isn't the case with Jerusalem, In Jerusalem it's from city center, but in Tel-Aviv for example, it is the distance from the highway that crosses the city.


dancer

Distance is relitive: its a long walk to the shop, but it doesn't seem as far to the pub, which is about a mile further

In Ireland it is always to the centre of the city or town, but it is not always very accurate. The oldest signs are in miles while the newer ones are all in kilometres, just to confuse things.

As a general rule in England, the distance on a road sign is to the centre of the town.

In New Zealand it used to be the distance between post offices. Of course these being the days of rationalisation, most of the small town post offices are long gone.

As someone earlier pointed out, they are often wrong, on the A303/A30 towards the South West if you subtract the distance to Exeter from the distance to Plymouth you get totally different results along the way,

Get your kids to do it on the next long car journey and make up for what they aren't being taught in schools these days

ChawkE

Near as I can tell, in the US, it's the distance to City Hall. They always seem to put the dot with the city name next to it right where City Hall belongs on the maps, if the maps' view is near enough to discern such a thing.

I remember a program in Britain some time ago that queried the distances on the boards. The program took the first distance quoted on a board as a starting point, measured the distance to the next board, took the second measurement from the first and checked the result against the board. On one stretch of road it was found that most of the distances were wrong. When the agency (can't remember its name) responsible for the boards was asked about the discrepancies, the answer was something like, "The distances stated are meant to be indication of distance, not an exact measurement, and to reassure drivers that they are on the right road."

I can quote one crazy measurement from my own experience. When I was a child I used to walk to and from school. Every day I passed a sign that said 'Radford 2 miles'. I lived in Radford, and no way was it 2 miles from my school to that district!

I have heard that in a lots of places it's distance from the post office (as in New Zealand).

I believe that in the case of London, Charring Cross station is correct. I have seen this in a book that I own (but have misplaced) of London walks.

However, whenever I drive anywhere distance markers seem to be largely a work of fiction.

PP

What do you do when the town has more than one post office?