On German bicycle direction signs, what does the background colour for bicycle highway pictograms indicate?
On this direction sign at Wixhausen near Darmstadt, Germany, several destinations use a bicycle highway pictogram. Some of the pictograms have a black background, whereas others have a green background. What is the difference in meaning between the pictograms with a black background vs. the pictograms with a green background?
This sign indicates Darmstadt and Arheiligen with a black-background pictogram, Egelsbach and Erzhausen with a green-background pictogram, and Frankfurt and Langen with both.
From context, it might mean green means finished and black means not finished, but I think that's not consistent with signs I've seen elsewhere, and I would find it an unusual meaning for traffic signs, so it'd be interesting to have a confirmation.
I did not find an explanation at this list of traffic signs for cyclists. At this stv2go list bicycle highways aren't mentioned at all.
Best Answer
Those are so called "Radschnellweg" (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radschnellweg), which literally means "bicycle highway". The signs that you posted seem to be part of the Radschnellverbindung Darmstadt-Frankfurt (https://www.nahmobil-hessen.de/unterstuetzung/planen-und-bauen/schneller-radfahren/radschnellverbindungen/radschnellweg-darmstadt-frankfurt/).
The green sign is the official StVO sign, i couldn't find anything related to the black sign, but i would assume that this was used before the green one was officially added to the StVO, and is kept for some reason (maybe because some parts of the Radschnellverbindung are not yet up to the standard, where the authorities can add the official green sign, but still want to mark those parts to be part of the overall path). I could find that Hessen distinguish Radschnellverbindung and Raddirektverbindung, where the former has the official green sign and higher prerequisites than the latter one.
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