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.

Comments

Non-story

[NeoRete]

In another article about this states that NYC replaces 8,000 signs a year anyway due to wear and tear and has until 2018 to finish.
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.

Re:I've got a better idea.

[rhsanborn]

Not in NYC...

UPI article is deceptive.

[Remus Shepherd]

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:

The mixed upper- and lowercase rule was adopted in 2003, but municipalities were given until 2018 to comply completely, Hecox said....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.

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.

Re:Penny wise, dollar foolish.

[VGPowerlord]

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."

Re:I've got a better idea.

[DragonWriter]

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.

Re:Budget?

[atrain728]

$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.

Re:Budget?

[cmiller173]

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

Re:Awesome

[rgmoore]

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.