Hacking the Highways

cindy writes "LA artist Richard Ankrom got fed up with the terrible signage on the Harbor Freeway. Rather than wait for CalTrans to do something about it, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He carefully made additional signage and added it to an existing freeway sign. The results were so good that no one, including CalTrans, noticed for months! The LA Times has an article including some of the video shot by the artist to document his "crime.""

Comments

California highway signs really suck

[Andy Tai]

California has a good highway system but the highway signage really suck. Errors, omissions, inconsistency and signs too small are common problems. For example, in the interchange of Freeway Interstate Five (Golden State Freeway) with Fourth Street right outside downtown Los Angeles, two signs show the direction to Los Angeles in opposite directions, and neither is right. (It goes like this:

If you drive on 4th Street from east of Freeway 5, driving westwards toward the freeway interchange, you first see (two arrows, one points up, the other points right):

^

|| Santa Ana

I-5

Los Angeles =>

where "Los Angeles" points to the entrance of North I-5 on the right hand side. And then after you pass that entrance continuing on 4th Street, crossing under the freeway bridge, you see the sign for the second entrance to South I-5 on the left hand side (the arrow points left):

/

= Los Angeles

\

SOUTH I-5

So there are two signs, pointing in opposite directions and contradicting each other, all showing the way to Los Angeles! But neither is right, because the way to Los Angeles is to go straight on 4th Street. From there you don't need to enter the freeway to go to Los Angeles downtown.) The error has been there for at least three years and no one is fixing it. No doubt people take matter into their own hands.

Re:Dissapointing

[connorbd]

I'd love to dump hot grits down my pants in front of this sign.

I think it's rather a fun idea, actually. I can think of a few places in Massachusetts where this would be a good idea (the ancient I-95 shields on the Tobin Bridge in Charlestown, for example, when I-95 hasn't gone anywhere near the Tobin Bridge, or even Boston for that matter, for about twenty years now).

Artists do a lot of strange things that make one slap one's head and say "dammit, why didn't I think of that?" Reminds me very much of the artist I once saw on TV who used to print his own dollar bill designs. He didn't spend the bills exactly, just traded them for goods with willing merchants. (I don't think it qualified as counterfeiting, as he was treating it as a barter transaction and most of them didn't look much like the real thing anyway.)

Every once in a while the phrase "subvert the dominant paradigm" doesn't sound like the fourth tattered bumper sticker from the right on the back of some aged hippie's car...

/Brian