Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Redesigned Signs?

The Register-Star reports this morning that the federal government has mandated all street signs to have capital and lowercase letters instead of all capital letters: "Signs of change." The rationale is that signs with caps and lowercase letters--Union St--are easier to read than signs with all caps--UNION ST--and will therefore prevent traffic accidents. 

Perhaps this is our chance to introduce brown signs to mark Hudson's locally designated historic districts and get more attractively designed signs throughout the city. Serifs might be nice, and could we lose the whale? 

7 comments:

  1. What the heck is the Federal Government doing by requiring cities to redesign their STREET SIGNS?

    Who is going to pay for it (the bill in New York City is estimated at $27 million)?

    Why should the national government dictate what combination of upper case and lower case letters Hudson should use?

    This is why so many people are pushing back hard against Washington DC and the morons in charge of things these days.

    November 2 is going to be big!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's easy to blame the Obama administration for this, but the 2009 revision of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which is where this comes from, had to have been in the works for years before Obama took office on January 20, 2009. Take a look at this flowchart: http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/amenflowcht.htm. The work had to have started when Bush II was still in office.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Doesn't matter. It's still stupid expensive and should be stopped.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What do you mean "loose the whale"?! The whale is the best part -- it celebrates our history and the most improbable inland whaling port in world history!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Maybe this in an opportune time to rename "Warren Street" ( whom ever Warren is) back to "Main Street" as it always was and logically should be.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Vincent, how could you? Warren Street has a particular ring. It is probably not a 'name' but a noun. It probably was a rabbit warren once. I was brought up on Warren Road in Northern Ireland. Full of sand dunes and a regular rabbit warren it was,just a few summer 'cottages' - now being circled by greedy developers, since it's on the Irish Sea. Don't dare change it back to 'Main Street' USA.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Well Jennifer, maybe you're right. This place does seem to be filled with lots of 'rabbit warrens.' Greed too! First definitive answer to why we have a 'Warren Street' I've heard of yet. And getting trapped in the sand dunes here also sounds appropriate. But then again, you ARE the 'Irish Princess.'

    ReplyDelete