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New York To Spend $27.5 Million Uncapitalizing Street Signs
250,000 street signs in New York City feature street names in capital letters only, which is not the national standard. Having no other issues on the table, The New York City Department of Transportation has decided to fix the problem and put up proper signs featuring both capital and lower-case letters at a cost of $27.5 million. The Transportation Department hopes to have the job completed by 2018 with 11,000 of the most important improperly capitaled signs fixed by the end of the year. Catastrophe averted.
From the article:
The additional cost to the city, if any, will be "marginal" because it receives a steady stream of state funding for routine sign repairs and replacement, DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow said. The life of a typical sign is about a decade, so most of the city's signs would be replaced in the next few years anyway, Solomonow said.
They didn't follow federal regulations on road signage, but are fixing them now as part of regular maintenance.
30 characters are fine for a s
Not in NYC...
Hold on! That UPI article is deceptive, and does not tell the whole story. Check out the original article in the NY Daily News, which I found via MotherJones:
So the signs are going to be replaced on a schedule where they would be replaced anyway, almost all of the funding comes from the routine sign replacement budget, and the whole deal was arranged back in 2003.
This is a non-story that some political jerks want to blow up into unreasonable proportions.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Because taxpayer money is for maintaining roads, but not for building political monuments.
You buy the land and build your own towers.
I DON'T KNOW. YOU TELL ME WHICH OF THESE IS HARDER TO READ.
I don't know. You tell me which of these is harder to read.
Oh, and of course, to post this, I have to type extra paragraphs because /. has a "lameness filter."
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Leave the signs as they are
Signs are sheet metal with some paint on them.
Paint fades over time.
Ergo, the signs would have to be replaced anyway.
The article says that NYC is replacing 11,000 of their 250,000 street signs this year -- those are signs they would be replacing anyway, as part of routine maintenance.
Leave the signs as they are, and refund that money to the taxpayers.
But the signs are going to need to be replaced anyway, so not changing them to lowercase as they are replaced wouldn't actually save the cost of replacement. There's a reason that the 2003 federal regulation at issue that requires that this be done gave until 2018 for it to be complete.
They ARE replacing the signs as part of normal maintenance. There is no 'additional' money being spent. The total cost of the project may well be $27M, but it is the same $27M they would have spent replacing signs even if they didn't change the lettering.
$110 for metal plus paint plus installation. I'd guess the installation portion is non trivial in cost, much as it would seem trivial to do.
Anyway, if there are 240,000 signs, and they replace 8000 a year, it would seem that the average life of a sign would be 30 years, not 2-3.
Feds Say All-Caps Street Signs Cause Accidents -- And Tells NYC To Spend $28 Million To Replace Them http://www.businessinsider.com/feds-say-all-caps-street-signs-cause-accidents-and-tells-nyc-to-spend-28-million-to-replace-them-2010-9
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/million_kuj8X4Z2VolVhXnCymfkvM
Apparently, 8,000 signs are replaced in New York every year anyway for wear and tear anyway. And the initiative started in 2003, for a 2018 deadline. If they started sooner, they would be in a better position. This is also a federal program, not a state or city program, both of whom opposed the initiative because they didn't want the deadline. And street signs have a lifetime expectancy of 10 years. 15 years to replace all of the signs, when they're expected to be replaced every 10 years, seems fine.
Better reflective backing, and a font designed for maximum road readability at distances, seems completely reasonable. The increased cost sounds marginal (as the DOD states), as signs aren't really that robust long-term (my sister worked with the sign department for an LA suburb).
Really, this is a controversy manufactured to sell papers. And it worked.
The ______ Agenda
Fun fact: social security is actually twice what you see on your paycheck (so 15% these days IIRC). The other half is 'paid' by you employer, which really just means they pay you 7.5% less.
Well that was a nice focused rant now wasn't it.
Point is, maybe like .00001% of street signs need replacing in any normal year.
Yet now they want to replace ALL 250,000 of them over 8 years, and that does not include the of 8000 replacements done for theft reasons EACH year. So it works out to something like 39 times the normal replacement rate.
Personally, it seems unlikely to me that there are ONLY 250,000 street signs in NYC.
Point is, maybe like .00001% of street signs need replacing in any normal year.
You imbecile (pls look up that word...). Are you suggesting that street signs only need replacing every million years? Please (1) switch brain on, (2) think.
If you had bothered to read the article- yeah, I know, this is Slashdot- you would have noticed that they mention that the cost is marginal. That's because the signs would need to be replaced on about the same schedule anyway as part of routine maintenance. So a more accurate description of the article would be "New York plans to use mixed case instead of all caps during routine street sign maintenance". But that wouldn't get enough people angry, so they went with the more inflammatory version.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.