60-6,120.

Placing and maintaining traffic control devices; jurisdiction.

(1) The Department of Transportation shall place and maintain, or provide for such placing and maintaining, such traffic control devices, conforming to the manual, upon all state highways as it deems necessary to indicate and to carry out the Nebraska Rules of the Road or to regulate, warn, or guide traffic.

(2)(a) In incorporated cities and villages with less than forty thousand inhabitants as determined by the most recent federal decennial census or the most recent revised certified count by the United States Bureau of the Census, the department shall have exclusive jurisdiction regarding the erection and maintenance of traffic control devices on the state highway system but shall not place traffic control devices on the state highway system within incorporated cities of more than twenty-five hundred inhabitants as determined by the most recent federal decennial census or the most recent revised certified count by the United States Bureau of the Census without consultation with the proper city officials.

(b) In incorporated cities of forty thousand or more inhabitants as determined by the most recent federal decennial census or the most recent revised certified count by the United States Bureau of the Census, except on state-maintained freeways of the state highway system where the department retains exclusive jurisdiction, the city shall have jurisdiction regarding erection and maintenance of traffic control devices on the state highway system after consultation with the department, except that there shall be joint jurisdiction with the department for such traffic control devices for which the department accepts responsibility for the erection and maintenance.

(3) No local authority shall place or maintain any traffic control device upon any highway under the jurisdiction of the department, except by permission of the department, or on any state-maintained freeway of the state highway system.

(4) The placing of traffic control devices by the department shall not be a departmental rule, regulation, or order subject to the statutory procedures for such rules, regulations, or orders but shall be considered as establishing precepts extending the provisions of the Nebraska Rules of the Road as necessary to regulate, warn, or guide traffic. Violation of such traffic control devices shall be punishable as provided in the rules.