New York City changing its street signs

[Gothamite]

THIS IS WHY I SUPPORT THE TEA PARTY!!!!!!

Pretty dumb reason.

You're taking that way to literally.

Tank is against wasteful, unnecessary government spending.

And this is as wasteful as it gets.

No, it isn't.

1. Studies have shown that these signs are more legible.

2. Legibilty is more or less the point of a street sign.

3. Street signs are a perfectly legitimate public expense.

4. These street signs are being phased in only slightly faster than street signs are replaced. Which means that most of this money was going to be spent replacing these signs anyway, except that the new ones are in a different typeface.

And this is precisely why I do not support the Tea Party. No offense to you personally, Tank, but with very few exceptions most of the Tea Party people I know go off on these anti-government rants with very little information about the actual subject at hand. It's all-too easy for anyone to be led to water by a dramatic headline.

[burgess]

For almost anything that the government spends a penny on, there's going to be somebody who considers it to be "wasteful and unnecessary".

I'm usually with you politically, but this is kinda silly. If research shows that that this is better, fine...replace it through attrition. Every sign should be grandfathered and replaced on the normal cycle (whatever that is). Making cities do this, even on a 15 year timetable, seems silly and wasteful.

This is the New York Post, which exists for literate Fox viewers, and I am sure that some of that $27 million would have been spent on signs that needed replacing. Nevertheless, I have a hard time believing there is any reason to replace these signs through anything other than nutrition.

This is why people hate government. And, while I think their black-and-white views are off, this is why I get it.

Research does say it's safer, at least on highway signs. They figured out the number of milliseconds it takes to read different typefaces, and equate that to time your eyes aren't on the road. Every millisecond counts. Not sure that it's necessary on little street signs, though - thought it was just highways.

There's a good thread somewhere on these boards about this Clearview font. Many states have been updating to this font over the past few years, so it's not a new thing. Not sure about NY's situation, but I doubt this was a spur of the moment or frivilous expendature.

Horrible move. NYC's street signs are iconic. This is just another waste of money we don't have.

And, more to the point of this board, that rendition of Clearview (it's gotta be 2-W) is disgusting.

[NoHoJoe]

Not much of a huge difference. The article says, though, that the changes are happening because of Federal law. What law is that, exactly?

It is part of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and if a city doesn't follow it they risk losing federal funding for street projects. This is occuring nationwide.

More Government Mandated Horse Manure (for lack of a better expletive!) t we have to lose $27 Million of our heard earned money to the Safety Nazi Nannies.

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? COUNT ME IN!!!

[NoHoJoe]

For almost anything that the government spends a penny on, there's going to be somebody who considers it to be "wasteful and unnecessary".

I'm usually with you politically, but this is kinda silly. If research shows that that this is better, fine...replace it through attrition. Every sign should be grandfathered and replaced on the normal cycle (whatever that is). Making cities do this, even on a 15 year timetable, seems silly and wasteful.

This is the New York Post, which exists for literate Fox viewers, and I am sure that some of that $27 million would have been spent on signs that needed replacing. Nevertheless, I have a hard time believing there is any reason to replace these signs through anything other than nutrition.

This is why people hate government. And, while I think their black-and-white views are off, this is why I get it.

Research does say it's safer, at least on highway signs. They figured out the number of milliseconds it takes to read different typefaces, and equate that to time your eyes aren't on the road. Every millisecond counts. Not sure that it's necessary on little street signs, though - thought it was just highways.

There's a good thread somewhere on these boards about this Clearview font. Many states have been updating to this font over the past few years, so it's not a new thing. Not sure about NY's situation, but I doubt this was a spur of the moment or frivilous expendature.

Horrible move. NYC's street signs are iconic. This is just another waste of money we don't have.

And, more to the point of this board, that rendition of Clearview (it's gotta be 2-W) is disgusting.

Who is doing the research? I WANT PROOF!!!

[burgess]

NoHoJoe: Penn State University and the Texas Transportation Institute did a lot of the research.

RyanB06: Nowhere in there does it state that the new signage must be in Clearview.

[omnivore]

Hmm...if it makes things safer, I guess why not? Font looks strange, but I did read some of the articles on the font studies a while back and was surprised they'd done that much research on it.

[Shmee]

Please take the public spending debate to a politically-oriented thread. I regret that the story I found to post here made such a big deal about the price tag, but I was hoping everyone would be mature enough to respect why this thread was actually started.

This is a thread about fonts on street signs.

[BlueSky]

Okay, it's about street signs, but the responsible government element is intertwined because looking at the old and new side-by-side, my first thought is, what was wrong with the old signs? They were certainly quite legible and I'd challenge DOT or anyone else to show one letter from a dissatisifed driver saying, "Hey, I can't read those big green signs, can you please develop something better?" Anyone here, point out one significant advantage of the new vs. the old. One.

How about here?

Hey, I'm fine if they want to change them on an attrition basis, even if the old NY signs were better, but would like to know: are they just pissing money away when another, less expensive option is available?

Here's an article about the change to Clearview. I skimmed it quickly and it seems to say in so many words that a bunch of font nerds weren't happy with Highway Gothic - for example, the interior spaces on 'e' and 'a' are too small - so they developed Clearview.

The slideshow is more informative. In one test they claim a 40% improvement in readability. I just don't see it but maybe they're right.

[DEAD!]

I think it's not the font that should have been changed, I have no issues with the change, but the size of the street signs. The signs are fine for pedestrians, but for a driver, a larger street sign would have been more effective, especially on busy streets.

[NoHoJoe]

NoHoJoe: Penn State University and the Texas Transportation Institute did a lot of the research.

RyanB06: Nowhere in there does it state that the new signage must be in Clearview.

Prove it.

[RyanB06]

RyanB06: Nowhere in there does it state that the new signage must be in Clearview.

Nor did I say so in my post.

[Punch]

$27 million to turn PERRY AV into Perry Av

This sums it up. Very stupid. Very, very stupid.

[BlueSky]

The more I look at this, the more it bugs me, and this is purely about the signs. Aren't the lower-case letters disproportionately large? They come almost to the top of the capitals on these signs. In normal typeface, lower case letters are roughly half as tall as upper case. If it bothers me, how in the world could the font nerds sign off on it?

[illwauk]

And this is precisely why I do not support the Tea Party. No offense to you personally, Tank, but with very few exceptions most of the Tea Party people I know go off on these anti-government rants with very little information about the actual subject at hand. It's all-too easy for anyone to be led to water by a dramatic headline.

This.

Besides, street signs... especially in northern cities where they get beaten up by brutal winters... have to be replaced, or at least maintained, every few years anyway.

Maybe people should stop getting their "news" from tabloids.

[SHaMROCK]

The city I live in, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada did this same thing about 25 years ago. When I was I kid I remember the street signs were all caps, and were all replace by mixed case letters. This was about the same time yeild signs switched from black/yellow to red/white.

[slapshot]

The more I look at this, the more it bugs me, and this is purely about the signs. Aren't the lower-case letters disproportionately large? They come almost to the top of the capitals on these signs. In normal typeface, lower case letters are roughly half as tall as upper case. If it bothers me, how in the world could the font nerds sign off on it?

The research proved in more cases than not, Clearview is more legible at greater distances than Interstate. Aesthetically, I think Interstate is better up close. But it is true that a mix of upper and lower case is more readable than all caps.

If the signs are proven more legible, than the drivers spend less time reading them and more time eyes on the road ahead, which is the primary reason for the change in the first place.

[OnWis97]

NoHoJoe: Penn State University and the Texas Transportation Institute did a lot of the research.

RyanB06: Nowhere in there does it state that the new signage must be in Clearview.

Prove it.

TTI:

http://tti.tamu.edu/publications/catalog/record_detail.htm?id=28383

http://tti.tamu.edu/publications/catalog/record_detail.htm?id=28382

I found nothing at Penn State: (http://www.pti.psu.edu/researchReports)

http://clearviewhwy.com/ResearchAndDesign/

http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/res-ia_clearview_font.htm

[burgess]

NoHoJoe: Penn State University and the Texas Transportation Institute did a lot of the research.

RyanB06: Nowhere in there does it state that the new signage must be in Clearview.

Prove it.

TTI:

http://tti.tamu.edu/publications/catalog/record_detail.htm?id=28383

http://tti.tamu.edu/publications/catalog/record_detail.htm?id=28382

I found nothing at Penn State: (http://www.pti.psu.edu/researchReports)

http://clearviewhwy.com/ResearchAndDesign/

http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/res-ia_clearview_font.htm'>http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/res-ia_clearview_font.htm

Wow. Dunno where I got Penn State from.

Now, I just found this on the website for the FHWA's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices: (http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/)

STREET NAME SIGNS AND LETTERING STYLES ? COMPLIANCE WITH THE MUTCD

In response to technical inquiries regarding certain provisions of the MUTCD as they relate to both Street Name signs and the requirement to display destination and street names in mixed-case lettering, the following clarifications are provided:

* There is no compliance date by which Street Name or other guide signs must be replaced for the sole purpose of changing a destination or street name composed of all upper-case letters to a combination of upper- and lower-case letters (2009 MUTCD Section 2A.13, Paragraph 11 and Section 2D.43, Paragraph 3).

* The only compliance dates that apply specifically to Street Name signs were established by previous editions of the MUTCD and deal with minimum letter heights only, not letter style or case. These dates are summarized in Table I-2 of the Introduction to the 2009 MUTCD and as follows:

o January 9, 2012 ? Minimum 6-inch letter height for post-mounted Street Name signs (except on multi-lane streets with speed limits greater than 40 mph). (Established by the 2000 MUTCD, Section 2D.38.)

o December 22, 2018 ? Minimum 8-inch letter height for post-mounted Street Name signs on multi-lane streets with speed limits greater than 40 mph and 12-inch letter height for overhead-mounted Street Name signs. (Established by the 2003 MUTCD, Section 2D.38.)

Signs that were replaced prior to the adoption of the 2009 MUTCD to meet these requirements?but used all upper-case lettering?do not need to be replaced again for the purpose of meeting the 2009 MUTCD requirement for mixed-case lettering. However, new signs that are installed after the adoption of the 2009 MUTCD must meet the mixed-case display requirement. Therefore, if signs are now being replaced to meet the minimum letter height requirements established by prior editions of the MUTCD, for example, these signs must also meet the 2009 MUTCD requirement for the display of the street name using a combination of upper- and lower-case letters.

A detailed explanation of compliance is provided in Paragraphs 20-24 of the Introduction to the 2009 MUTCD.

* The 2009 MUTCD continues to specify the FHWA Standard Alphabets for use on all traffic signs. There are no requirements or recommendations to use any alternative lettering style to the Standard Alphabets. Further, the use of the Clearview alternative lettering style is subject to the terms of an Interim Approval, which was issued based on a modest legibility improvement under certain nighttime viewing conditions for mixed-case destination legends composed of Series 5-W of this alternative alphabet on signs using microprismatic retroreflective sheeting in a positive-contrast color orientation only. According to the same study, there was also an improvement in the nighttime legibility of the Standard Alphabet Series E(m) when microprismatic retroreflective sheeting was used on the test signs. Agencies wishing to use the alternative lettering style must still seek approval from the FHWA.

[RyanB06]

Oh by the way, that change to the street sign specs originally appeared in the 2003 edition of the MUTCD.

I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

[loogodude90]

The more I look at this, the more it bugs me, and this is purely about the signs. Aren't the lower-case letters disproportionately large? They come almost to the top of the capitals on these signs. In normal typeface, lower case letters are roughly half as tall as upper case. If it bothers me, how in the world could the font nerds sign off on it?

Because this has everything to do with legibility and nothing (or at least considerably less) to do with aesthetics.