On-road and laboratory evaluation of bilingual variable message signs

The purpose of this study was to accommodate bilingual (English/French) messages on freeway variable message signs (VMS), while maintaining sign effectiveness. The current English-only 3 line (3L) messages were compared with bilingual 3L messages (using symbols and text) and bilingual 4L messages (text only, 2 lines per language). A calibration study, including on-road and laboratory testing, was used to establish appropriate presentation times for VMS messages in a laboratory study. There was no significant difference in performance between Anglophones and Francophones for the 4L signs or for the English only signs. However, Francophones performed significantly worse than Anglophones on the 3L signs, likely due to lack of separation of the languages. For both Anglophones and Francophones, using colour (to indicate degrees of congestion), on the 3L sign helped improve performance more than adding it on the 4L sign (where it was used to differentiate English (white) and French (yellow), though the effect was a very weak trend. Overall, for both language groups, the 4L sign was preferred.