Hi. It’s been a while. Quite a while, in fact.

In December 2023, FHWA published the 11th Edition of the MUTCD. FHWA understood that states, especially ones that publish their own state MUTCD supplements or state-specific MUTCDs, would need time to update these documents to work with the 11th Edition. FHWA also changed what was allowable under “substantial compliance”, meaning many state-specific devices and practices would no longer be approved.

The deadline for states to adopt the national 11th Edition MUTCD as is, or adopt the 11th Edition as appended by a state MUTCD supplement, or adopt a state MUTCD incorprating 11th Edition content, was set as January 18, 2026.

Which is… today. Even though it’s a Sunday.

So now that the entire US is supposed be fully on board with the 11th Edition of the MUTCD with no excuses, I bet all you happy MOTS users are falling all over each other to visit this site and see it completely updated to the new edition, with all the new and revised signs and links to 11th Edition text, tables, and figures.

Wellll… I’m working on it. Really.

First, I’ll say that my primary professional priority the past few years has been to keep my consulting clients happy. This includes managing the day-to-day operations of NCUTCD, providing Open Roads SignCAD training to agencies for Bentley Systems, and as a subconsultant on Arizona’s adoption of the 11th Edition and revising the Arizona MUTCD Supplement. Keeping food on the family table is kind of a priority in my “retirement”. Plus volunteering for several worthwhile nonprofits in my remaining free time.

Has this prevented me from getting the MOTS website updated? Yes.

Do I plan to update the MOTS website to 11th Edition compliance? Yes.

I have been tracking the new signs added to the MUTCD and downloading the Standard Highway Signs layouts for those signs as they have been published. I will be creating the new signs as I find time amid my other tasks.

FHWA deciding not to publish a HTML version of the 11th Edition will make my job quite a bit more difficult in terms of providing MUTCD content links and references. Difficult, but not impossible. The plan is to take the master 11th Edition PDF and virtually rip it apart and reassemble it into Section-sized individual PDF files, including relevant tables and figures in each one. Given that the 11th Edition has 1,161 PDF pages and about 1,000 Sections in 85 Chapters in 9 Parts, that might take some added time.

After the signs and MUTCD content is ready, the plan is to revamp the website on a page-by-page basis, similar to how the site was brought forward from 2003 to 2009 MUTCD compliance. This might also take some time to roll out.

I’m still planning to include user-editable PDFs for a number of signs. However, PDF files with larger font sizes have problems rendering in some PDF readers. Also, the PDF plug-ins and readers in many web browsers don’t bring in embedded fonts well, so even though my editable PDFs have the sign alphabet fonts properly embedded, users may still see weird font substitutions. And unfortunately I don’t have any control over that.

So… in summary, even though it doesn’t look like much is going on at the moment, I am working to update the Manual of Traffic Signs website to full 11th Edition compliance, but I do ask all your patience as I catch up with FHWA and the states.

And thank you all for continuing to visit and use the best website on US traffic signs for almost 30 years. And I’m hoping to have the site completely updated by the MOTS’ 30th anniversary. 🙂