November 24, 2016: Both existing and replacement shields for US 30/218 at the Atkins corner (old IA 279) were up on Thanksgiving weekend. I’m guessing these were the last of the day before break.
A signage contract let last year called for replacing shields along US 30 in eastern Iowa. The replacement process includes increasing the size of the shields on the four-lane portions of 30, including changing the US 151/218 shields to the wide version. These three-digit shields use Series C, which is a significant improvement over a larger Series B (the “218” in the small shield above, which works just fine for a square) — but then the two-digit 30 is in Series D, which again makes those digits wider typography-wise.
There’s only one three-digit US highway in Iowa that does not have at least one 1 in it (275), so if we’re going to bump up the size, Series D for everything would create better visual consistency. It looks like there would be space.