Posted on 09/30/2010 8:00:45 AM PDT by Qbert
The city will change the lettering on every single street sign - at an estimated cost of about $27.5 million - because the feds don't like the font.
Street names will change from all capital letters to a combination of upper and lower case on roads across the country thanks to the pricey federal regulation, officials said Wednesday.
By 2018, MADISON AVE. will become Madison Ave. and will be printed in a font called Clearview, the city Department of Transportation says.
The Federal Highway Administration says the switch will improve safety because drivers identify the words more quickly when they're displayed that way - and can sooner return their eyes to the road.
Still, several city residents were OUTRAGED.
"That's ridiculous," said James Sullivan, 34, a bike messenger from Queens. "They might as well just burn the damn money."
[Snip]
The city has about 250,000 signs, and it costs about $110 to replace one, the DOT says. Officials said the new signs will have improved reflectivity and clarity for nighttime drivers.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
I don’t think anybody would care in the least if the signs were replaced by attrition, when they needed replacing. It’s the federal mandate that it be done NOW that irks people.
And for those of you who don’t know, long ago, each borough in NYC had a different colored street sign. There’s a very cool website that has the whole story. Here is the link to the page about the different colored signs:
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/SIGNS/Color/color.html
You can see from the article that it was federal meddling that put an end to THOSE signs. (The very signs, with the very color scheme and the very lettering THEY demanded, that they are now ordering us to replace.)
Nevertheless, in recent years, the city had begun RE-replacing the signs, trying to bring back the colors. My own childhood neighborhood is an historic district and thus now sports brown signs with white lettering.
As for the current sign changes demanded by the Transportation Department, it is this kind of federal meddling that has people up in arms.
However, everybody might want to take a look at the poll posted on the Daily News website: Seems the NYers are FAVORING the change, “for safety.”
Regards,
And you folks who make less than $250,000 don't think you're paying for this?
Two government workers in a socialist country walking down the street. One is digging holes the other is following, filling them in.
A man walks up and asks “What’s going on?”
One of them reply’s, “The guy who plants the trees is sick today and if we don’t work we don’t get paid.”
“Would that be the fed funding to make the change? Sounds like a wash.”
Nope. Our county commissioner, who is a democrat who acts alot like a conservative most of the time, said it was an unfunded mandate. This is why he opposes changing the signs, and asked the question about what would happen if we did nothing.
But all sorts of flavors of highway and emergency preparedness funding could be tagged to this requirement. He has tasked the county PW director to find out what the penalty is...so we shall see.
This is a national issue. Everywhere you go, if you see a street sign...somebody is supposed to pay to replace it by 2015.
Definitely the money quote.
What will they do here in DC with the lettered streets? Comedy.
The don’t care about nighttime drivers. If they did then they would outlaw all the new headlights which completely blind all the other drivers.
Well, yeah. That's why stop signs are all in lowercase. Oh... wait.
This is where the local government should tell the feds to GFT.
How does “federal” highway administration rules become legal mandates on purely LOCAL roads????
And who PROVES, BEYOND ALL DOUBT, that ONE FONT is better than anything else.
Utopian rules - one gang knows EVERYTHING better than everyone else - are part of the path to tyranny and away from Liberty.
“
New Yorkers outraged as bureaucrats order city to change lettering
on every single street sign
“
I am sick and tired that the current regime(s) are headed in a direction
180 degrees from what Reagan did when he put the country on the right path.
This is just a case of what Reagan said:
“The job of the beauracracy is...
TO GROW THE BEAURACRACY!!!”
My thought too.
Just because something can be optimum doesn’t mean it has to be optimum. We accept less than optimum all the time for reasons of cost, aesthetics, functionality or tradition. Autocratic governments with the idea that they have unlimited budgets tend to forget that.
This is just plain wrong.
I can read a full capital sign better than the smaller letters.
As I get older, my eyesight is sometimes challenging me to read signs.
Will this become nationwide?
What a waste of money.
What a pander to the union thugs who will have the job.
From the FAQ of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways
“14.Q: Can lettering on street name signs still be done in all upper case letters?
A: No, lettering for place names and destinations on all guide signs, including Street Name signs, shall be in mixed case lettering with the 1st letter in upper case followed by lower case lettering. This is because mixed case lettering has better recognition and legibility distances than all upper case lettering for place names and destinations. The minimum letter heights for Street Name signs given in Section 2D.45 refer to the height of the initial upper case letter.”
http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/knowledge/faqs/faq_part2.htm#q14
I think that’s what I was trying to say in my post, isn’t it?
To my mind, government mandates of all sorts seem to come down the pike for one reason only: to make the public think that they’re DOING something.
I personally believe this particular mandate fits that description quite nicely. I mean, how many times have you heard of an auto accident happening and the driver later saying, “Gee, officer, I was trying to read all those capital letters on the sign and the car just got away from me! If only the signs had big AND small letters, this never would have happened!”
So why this demand from the feds? Is it because they are True Believers, determined to wipe out even the smallest speck of danger from the roadways? Or is it to justify their own jobs and positions? I tend to go with the latter.
In any event, you’re right, optimization is not always required, and you are futher correct when you point out that each of us, every day, make decisions to purchase less than optimum items due to all the myriad reasons you listed.
Regards,
PS: Did you get a chance to look at that “Forgotten NY” website? It really is very interesting, and for me, a born & raised NYer, a little trip down memory lane. (I do remember those old signs.)
Coming to a Health Care system near you.
Me too. I'd even say it's payment to signage firms or their unions.
Cool site. I love antique things. It's the reason I loved old European towns, seeing things like a family-owned hotel/restaurant that's been in continuous operation for 350 years.
The font they want us to use was not designed to have space between the letters. That makes it HARDER to read, and also makes it look like an amateur computer effort.
The thing that has bothered me about New York City street signs ever since I moved here in 1963 is that there a sign on only one of the four corners on most intersections. And it never seems to be the corner you are looking at.
Instead of creating lighted signs for the tourist district, how about a sign on at least two of the corners of every intersection?
Wait. They already did Edgar Allen Poe Street back in the nineties. Our City Council loves naming streets after people and then doesn’t bother to check the spelling.
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