Side-by-side comparison

A year ago I critiqued the newer street name signs in Worcester.  One of the recurring comments I get from people when the topic of street signs comes up is that the Times New Roman typeface being used on some of the new signs is “prettier”.  There is a prettiness to many serif-style typefaces.  That’s why most books are typeset in serifs, and many large billboards feature serifed typography.

For the serifed type to be readable, however, there needs to be ample space around the lettering.  One can do this on a printed page with typographic tricks like leading, kerning, margins, etc., and one can do this on a large sign like a billboard if one lays out the design properly.

Street name signs don’t offer much space — “sans serif” typefaces can be used in thicker weights (for more readability) because they don’t need to accommodate the extra space needed by the decorative serif elements.

It’s hard to convince the “serifs are prettier” crowd that the prettiness makes things less readable from a distance.  But at the intersection of Park Avenue and Salisbury Street, I noticed the city has once again erected signs with inconsistent typefaces. That would normally elicit a grumble from someone in the car, but in this case, I thought there might be an opportunity here for a teachable moment.  Behold a sans-serif typeface used on the Park Ave. sign on the left, and “Times New Roman” on the Park Ave. sign on the right:

Squinting at Times New Roman -- click image to enlarge

The inconsistency of the city’s sign program offers a perfect illustration of how ineffective the serifed signs are.

Here’s my suggestion to the DPW&P for a simple goal in 2011 — less pretty, more effective.

Thanks.

Borrowing Good Ideas

On a recent trip through Lexington, I noticed the street name signs have been switched out for MUTCD-compliant ones. When a community upgrades its signage, we usually see either text-only, text-plus-graphic, or text-plus-seal.  Adding a graphic element usually adds a few inches to the length of the sign, thereby reducing the area available for text.  The new signs in Lexington, however, add just a very small graphic element just above the smaller type of the street designation:

I won’t hold my breath, but what if Worcester (gasp) actually borrowed a good idea from somewhere else?

Or what if we improved on a good idea from somewhere else?

Wescott St. – Wescott Ave. – “WesTcott St.”

Last year the folks at the DPW&P Sign Shop managed to change Wescott St. into Wescott Ave. The Wescott Ave. sign is still up a year later, so I guess no one’s embarrassed about that boo-boo.

One block away from the “Avenue” sign, they’ve now erected a sign for “Westcott St.”:

Removing the extra “t” won’t be as simple as removing the extra “ry” from “Roxburyry St.” was, so this one will probably have to be redone.  I’m sure I’m not the only taxpayer who’s getting tired of seeing signs replaced needlessly with ones that are misspelled.

In case the crew at the Sign Shop need something against which to check the spellings and/or street designations in the future, there’s a handy PDF file available for download.  From the City of Worcester, no less.  Go figure.

Or if proofreading the sign against a street listing is too time-consuming, snap a photo of the sign you’re about to erect and send it to me.  I’ll proofread it for free as a community service, and save us all some embarrassment.

Street signs of wood

Paxton

Scandinavia buried deep . . .

. . . but still hanging in there.

Scandinavia needs a good screw

“Armadale” — one year later

Last year about this time I posted an image of the street name sign at Armandale St. & Main St.  Its post was tilted & the sign was badly bent. And it’s also misspelled. According to the city’s own street name listing and Google maps. the name should be “Armandale”,  not “Armadale”.

The DPW&P was relatively quick to fix the very embarrassing “Roxburyry St.” late last year.  Presumably “Armadale St.” isn’t quite so shameful, as it remains in place to this day.

"Armadale" 2011 -- still bent, still tilted, still incorrectly spelled

Just when we’d mastered the pronunciation of “Roxburyry” . . .

An anonymous source reports that “Roxburyry St.” is no more –it’s now “Roxbury” again.  There’s a great big gap between the “y” and “S”, which tells you that they merely removed two letters.

I would normally take this opportunity to congratulate the DPW&P for correcting their error in less than two months.  But simply removing two letters still leaves us with a street sign whose letters are too short to meet MUTCD requirements. (4.75 inches instead of 6 inches.)

Unfortunately, it would take a power greater than this blog to make that happen.

Worcester in 1970?

You might be forgiven for thinking you’ve gone back in time if you pass by the intersection of Nevada St. & Monroe Ave.  While Worcester’s DPW&P is busily making our MUTCD compliant signage non-compliant on the busier thoroughfares, here’s a lamp-post that has evidently gone untouched for 40+ years.

Another forgotten corner of Worcester

Too bad there isn’t a gas station at that corner — perhaps we could still fill our tank there for less than $10 if the time warp radius is big enough.  It’d probably be leaded gas, though.

Another blast from the past

From reader Mike, who now lives in Seattle, a picture of Gross Court’s old sign, which includes the “Private Street Dangerous” designation we all know and fear. He says he “took it about 20 years ago on a visit back to Worcester. Gross Ct. was a ‘paper road’ off of Austin Street between Queen & Piedmont; I don’t think it exists any more (from what I could see on Google Street view).”

Mike also notes that in Seattle, they’re replacing their street signs from the 1950s and that citizens have an opportunity to buy the old signs. I would have loved to see that happen in Worcester, not least because we could have recouped much of the cost of any sign-replacement program with selling the older signs.

He also thought the readership would appreciate this sign blooper from Seattle:

(I would like to thank readers who have been sending me pictures. It has been one of the great pleasures of writing here to correspond with and meet so many people who love Worcester, and it’s just an added perq to see these pictures.)

When height matters

Some of the new street name signs in Worcester are out of compliance with MUTCD standards, which require 6-inch uppercase letters.

Here’s one where the letters are 5 inches tall (click the image to see the measurement):

That sign was installed about a year and a half ago.  It replaced a sign that had 6-inch letters.  That were perfectly legible.

Here’s an egregious example from Frederick St. (off Lincoln St.):

Those letters are 4.125 inches tall.   That sign was installed about 2 years ago, replacing a sign that had 6-inch tall letters.

Diagonally across Lincoln St. you’ll see another newish sign for Northampton St. (sans heart graphic):

That one has letters that are only 4 inches tall!

How about our new favorite, “Roxburyry St.”, off Highland?

Just installed in the past few weeks, this one has letter heights of 4.75 inches.

So what’s the common denominator here, besides an inability on the DPW’s part to use a ruler?  Most of the replacement signs have hearts on them.  That seems to be the driving force behind Worcester’s sign replacement program — NOT meeting MUTCD requirements, as has been claimed . . . because many of the new signs are uncompliant, as opposed to the vast majority of 30 year old signs, like this one:

. . . which featured letters that are fully 6 inches tall:

Meanwhile some of our older yellow signs, often barely legible, go unreplaced.

Councilor Lukes recently introduced the subject of sign replacement, asking whether there was an unfunded FHWA mandate to replace signs for the sake of using mixed-case lettering.  As has been pointed out here previously, this is a misreading of the MUTCD guidelines, and has been debunked by Snopes.

There IS an expensive and unnecessary mandate about sign replacement in Worcester, but it is generated locally — whether by the City Manager’s office, the DPW&P, or both — to replace Worcester street name signs for the sake of the heart graphic.  Mixed case doesn’t seem to matter — the new signs do it that way and also all caps, depending on the sign worker’s mood of that day.  Meeting MUTCD guidelines for letter height — a GENUINE requirement for new signs — doesn’t seem to matter to the folks at DPW&P’s sign shop.  The letter heights on new signs range anywhere from 4 inches to 6 inches and lots of heights in between.

The expensive and unnecessary “heart mandate” costs us in two ways:

1. The materials & labor to create & install the replacement sign

and

2. The materials and labor that will be required to replace many of those signs YET AGAIN, since the letter heights on many of them are not MUTCD-compliant.

The “unnecessary” part of this is the cruelest irony — most of the pre-2000 green signs in Worcester have 6 inch letters and need not be replaced per the MUTCD until they reach the natural end of their usefulness, whether through fading, damage, etc.  In most cases there was no need to replace these . . . except to get a heart graphic on there.

This was pointed out here on this blog nearly a year ago.  I filed a petition this past spring to have the sign replacement program temporarily stopped so that we could examine this, but my petition was ignored.  So we’ve spent many more months replacing MUTCD-compliant signs with non-compliant ones. In the midst of the worst recession in decades.  When our potholes go unfilled and valuable city employees lose their jobs.

Perhaps no one at city hall was paying attention, so let’s say it again:

Worcester is replacing MUTCD-compliant signs with non-compliant ones.

Let me clear my throat and see if the message can penetrate the city manager’s office:

Worcester is replacing MUTCD-compliant signs with non-compliant ones.

One more time for the DPW&P, because Mr. Moylan was a couple of miles away replacing the Roxburyry St. sign :

Worcester is replacing

MUTCD-compliant signs

with non-compliant ones.

Can we stop the madness now?  The heart graphic is not that important.  Leave any and all MUTCD-compliant signs in place, focus on replacing the old yellow signs which are NOT compliant . . . and then have a look at all the “new” signs that have been erected in the past decade and try to undo the damage by replacing those whose letter heights are now non-compliant.