Forum: travel.stackexchange.com
Tags: <uk><driving><london><swindon>
Title: Aren't there road signs that show populations of towns in the UK?
Question: I had a trip from Heathrow Airport to Swindon and later turned back to the airport via the M4. During the trip I haven't noticed any signs that show populations of towns.   When I searched for London on the internet, the results were mostly for a city in Canada.   Did I miss the road signs or aren't there any signs?

Answers:
sents: text: I have lived in five countries including the UK and never seen such a sign in real life.
text: I only know them from American movies, where I've always semi-felt they were some sort of Wild West joke or something, like when they reduce the number by one after a lynching.
text: I can't conceive of why the population would be posted outside a town, rather than its GDP, area in hectares, name of its mayor, or some other random datum.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/76528/Amy Dee Dempster
score: 81
sents: text: Most villages/towns/cities have signs saying "Welcome to {name of village/town/city} ", but they (almost exclusively) don't have populations on them in the UK.
text: When you drive along motorways, like the M4, you don't go into any villages/towns/ cities, so you don't see the "Welcome to {name of village/town/city} " signs.
text: You do see "Welcome to {name of county} " though.
text: London, UK, possibly doesn't have these signs anyway -
text: London's too big.
text: I expected to find signs to the boroughs and/or the towns and villages that have been absorbed into Greater London, but I didn't find anything for "Welcome to Westminster sign" on google images, or for Hackney or Brixton either.
text: Possibly only smaller towns and villages bother with the signs.
text: I did find this for Tolworth, an area of the Kingston-upon-Thames borough.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/33050/AndyT
score: 39
sents: text: At least one existed: one was erected in Trowbridge in 1999, and then replaced later.
text: But they are exceedingly rare, and I'm not entirely sure that these count as 'road signs'.
text: Source:
text: Geograph
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/76547/Dragon
score: 31
sents: text: According to a brief google search (and from personally visiting several countries on different continents), the population number on the welcome sign seems to be a North American custom.
text: I've never seen this anywhere else.
text: So, to answer your question, there most likely are no such signs, you didn't miss them.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/76529/Kakturus
score: 11
sents: text: You didn't miss them - they don't exist here, or indeed almost anywhere outside of the USA as far as I've seen.
text: Also, our councils can hardly manage to fill potholes, posting optional factoids on signs is just extravagance.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/20361/John U
score: 6
sents: text: As others have said, town signs in the UK don't have the population on.
text: What they do quite often have, however, is "twinned with", showing the other towns and cities they are partnered with for cultural exchange reasons - as shown on the bottom of the Trowbridge sign in @Dragon's post
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/18319/Nick C
score: 2
sents: text: In the UK, we have no local registration of one's residence.
text: You can move somewhere and the only thing the council knows about a change in residence, is one name on the council tax bill, a new kid in a school, new benefit claim, etc.
text: There is no need to register other family members or lodgers.
text: The only reasonably reliable count of population is every 10 years when the census is taken.
text: The rest of the time, it would be a costly hassle for councils to maintain such a sign.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/83751/Nick
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
While welcome signs are common in the UK, signs showing the population are almost unknown outside of the US.
In the UK they do not put th total population of a town or city on road signs. One of the reasons for this is that there is no way for these towns/cities to know what the total population is due to the fact that there is no local registration of one's residence.