New York To Spend $27.5 Million Uncapitalizing Street Signs 322
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.
I Think.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
...it's a CAPITAL idea!
Looks like all the signs where in upper case so they decided to spend 27 mil to fix it.
*puts on sunglasses*
I think it's a capital idea.
YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- There, fixed it for ya.
Yeah... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as the economic woes, seems like as good a way to create jobs as any. It's basically just stimulus money that happens to be taking care of a long term issue at the same time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Awesome (Score:4, Funny)
This is a great initiative to implement when facing massive, crippling budget deficits.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It's dickheads like you that lead to giant government deficients.
It's "only" 27 million. How many other "only" this million dollars are there out there? And for something a STUPID as this.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called perspective.
People have no qualms whining about the $50 billion the Department of Education is budgeted.
But dare to say the $650 billion Department of Defence budget could get cut a little, you're suddenly weakening the country, giving in to the terrorists and a very very bad man.
Cutting $50 billion out of a $1,000 billion deficit is peanuts, though.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that the Feds have a warehouse of bags full of 50 billion dollar peanuts.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really.
If you look at the budget allocations, four programs get around 70% ($2,500 billion in 2010): Defense, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
That means every other department fights over the rest (which in 2010 totalled $1,000 billion). Education, Health and Human Services (FDA/CDC), Commerce (NOAA), Interior, Homeland Security (note: not part of Defense, and this includes Border Patrol and Customs), State Dept, NASA, Energy, Transportation, Justice, all have to divy up the remaining 30%.
Incid
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not buying the argument that the budget can't be cut. And yes, I'd start with the Education Department. It teaches no one and is the primary cause of regulator burden on schools.
And Entitlements should not be off the table. Lots can be done to reduce costs such as phasing in higher retirement ages for SS, take a hard look at the current practice of SS being used as a replacement for welfare, etc.
Other things like a across the board freeze on Federal pay and a freeze on hiring are common sense things to
Re: (Score:2)
phasing in higher retirement ages for SS
What would you do if your pension plan -- that you've paid into for years -- suddenly decided that you need to be older to collect?
Oh wait, that's already happened with SS.
If any company ran its pension plan the way that the US.gov runs SS, the executives responsible would be in jail.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what phasing in means.
And yes, SS is a Ponzi scheme. All the more reason to ditch it (phase it out) in favor of some kind of plan that relies more of private investment. I shudder to think what I would have saved up if that 6% of my paycheck had gone into a properly managed account (which means not in high risk junk bonds, mortgages, etc.) for the past 25 years.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What would you do if your pension plan -- that you've paid into for years -- suddenly decided that you need to be older to collect?
Then it might not go broke, like so many real-world pension plans have.
People live longer than they did when SS was introduced. If you live longer, you need to work longer. What's so hard to figure out about that?
IMO, Social Security should be allocated a fixed percentage of all national personal income, and the retirement age should be continuously adjusted to match the amount of money coming in. That takes all the demographic risks out of the system.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not arguing it can't be cut either, but saying that cutting Education, implimenting a pay freeze, eliminating earmarks and other things like it will be the saviours of the budget is to ignore the bigger picture.
(By the way, most of the Education budget is given back to the country in the form of Pell Grants. The more you know?)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/million_kuj8X4Z2VolVhXnCymfkvM [nypost.com]
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 si
Re: (Score:2)
Nice strawman. All money arbitrarily spent is being misappropriated because its not being routed to heartstrings-group-x. That is exactly how everything, ever works
Auction the old ones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Mixed case? (Score:2)
All that will do is cause the UNIX guys to froth at the mouth.
Capitals are the work of the devil!
Re: (Score:2)
The my work here is done.
OTOH, it's not exactly hard to get them to froth at the mouth. Just a few quick ways:
1) How stupid is it I have to watch me casing
2) Why can't this have a good input like windows
3) You should have
4) Here is a new keyboard.
5) we cleaned the boxes out of your cube.
umm (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Meh, for all we know they just didn't do enough construction.
Welcome to the world of budgets: if you don't spend it this year, you don't get it next year.
And you may actually *need* it next year.
ALL CAPS is like Yelling! (Score:2)
Don't you know, ALL CAPS is like yelling at someone! So they are working to make these signs more net-friendly. So when I tell you to go to 5TH STREET and BROADWAY, you won't have to ask me to quit yelling and I won't have to explain that I wasn't yelling and that is how the street names are actually spelled.
Hyperbole, much? (Score:2, Insightful)
FTFA:
"The Federal Highway Administration said the new sign standards improve safety because they allow drivers to identify words more quickly, allowing them to swiftly bring their eyes back to the road."
Yeah, pointless government waste.
Re: (Score:2)
Me says: "Being stuck in traffic allow drivers to take all the time they need to read the street signs and identify words as slowly as they want, allowing them not care about how fast they bring their eyes back on the yellow cab in front of them."
Money well spent (Score:5, Interesting)
This is money well spent, at least on busier intersections, and exits from limited access highways.
Drivers can read / recognize mixed case from further distance than all caps.
It's not a great leap to conclude that with this change, drivers will make fewer last second swerves, or stop short less often. TFA alludes to this.
Safety increases ever so slightly, but for millions of people, and for many years.
Though if I were a NY tax payer I would prefer that they replace them through attrition. The fact that it will take until 2018 makes this seem to be partially the case.
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent up! +1 sensible.
Money well spent? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Please provide some standards to back up your demand. Under what circumstances would a car accident be "officially recognized" as having been caused by too-slow reading speed, even if it was?
The answer, obviously, is none. Illegible signs only contribute to car accidents as a confounding factor which exacerbates other factors. In order for the sign to distract you, there has to have been an unexpected hazard to distract you from, and that hazard is what gets written down on the accident report.
Re:Money well spent? (Score:5, Insightful)
60 mph = 88 feet per second.
Say the new signs get your eyes back on the road half a second quicker - that's 44 *less* feet that you've traveled without watching the cars in front of you.
Don't think a lot can happen in that 44 feet you traveled in that extra half second?
Stopping distance for a car going 60 mph (assuming 1.5s reaction time + avg braking distance of ~250 feet, multiple sources found through google report that this seems to be the average consensus, yielding ~350-400 feet as stopping distance on a flat/level/dry surface, for an auto traveling at 60mph.
So that 44 feet is about 10% of your stopping distance - a 10% larger margin of safety every time you look away from the road and read a road sign. That's not trivial, especially when you consider the hundreds of thousands of vehicles travelling around NYC. If it helps prevent 2 minor accidents a day, that's lower emergency services costs, slightly lower insurance rates, less money spent on road repairs, and less money spent on average by people repairing their vehicles. If the science behind the studies is sound, it does add up in the aggregate.
Re: (Score:2)
given average worked days a year is ~250 (5 days a week 50 weeks a year) over 8 years.. they need to replace 125 signs a day to hit 250,000. i'm not sure how many man hours it takes to replace a street sign - i know some are harder than others and some can could allow you to replace 2 or more at once.. but ... i'd say for a 2 man crew i would be surprised if they could replace more than 4 an hour.. given the average work time in a work day ~4-5 hours (8 -lunch -breaks -travel time) a 2 man crew lets say
Re: (Score:2)
Non-story (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Damn (Score:2)
I could have been set for life!
Hmmm.. (Score:2)
I guess $108 / sign isn't too horribly high since you are paying for gas, workers, equipment, etc. but damned if they didn't pick a horrible time to decide they needed to fix what really amounts to a non-problem.
Re: (Score:2)
It is a problem. Currently, they cause more accidents. and it's over 8 years.
The government rolls on. stuff needs to be done.
UPI article is deceptive. (Score:5, Informative)
Hold on! That UPI article is deceptive, and does not tell the whole story. Check out the original article in the NY Daily News [nydailynews.com], which I found via MotherJones: [motherjones.com]
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: (Score:2)
This is a non-story that some political jerks want to blow up into unreasonable proportions.
And apparently it's working, based on some of the posts in here.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe NYC gets the luxury of replacing its signs every ten years but there are places in the rest of New York where you can still see barely legible 30+ year old signs with the zinc frames (think Sesame Street).
Re: (Score:2)
That answers that... (Score:2, Funny)
There goes the idea (Score:2)
Welcome to FARK (Score:2)
where people write and approve troll articles to increase page views. Next up: "THE GUBMINT IS COMIN TO TAKE UR GUNS AWAY!!"
What does that work out to per letter? (Score:2)
$27.5 million for 250,000 signs. That's $110 a sign. If an average sign has about 9-11 letters that's about $10-12 a letter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it that whenever something is wrong in one area, clearly the solution is to not spend any money anywhere else until that problem is fixed?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it that whenever something is wrong in one area, clearly the solution is to not spend any money anywhere else until that problem is fixed?
Because THIS problem affects ME. Don't you know who I AM?!?!?
Re:Budget? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Budget? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Budget? (Score:5, Funny)
because outrage at government spending gives Slashbots a hard-on.
Great free alternative to the little blue pill
Re: (Score:2)
>>>NYC already has to replace 8000 signs a year due to wear and tear, or theft. They have elected to replace them with new signs, instead of identical signs.
Good.
I wonder if there isn't a way to make signs cheaper? $110 for a piece of metal plus paint seems very pricey. Especially if the sign is doomed to get stolen in 2-3 years anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Funny)
.00001% need to be replaced each year? Really? The average life of a street sign is 10 million years? Wow. Thanks for the info.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
If it were the south I'd say they should just fix it when they repair signs with bullet holes in them. But since it's NY maybe they'll just replace them when they get urinated on.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a mention of the Federal Highway Administration being involved. It's probably a national rule, and I suspect the fed gov't may be able to refuse road funds for failure to comply to minimum safety standards. blah, blah, blah.
$27 million is nothing in the big picture of transportation funds. The 2010 MTA operating budget was $13.4 billion. You could add or remove $27 million from that, and it wouldn't be noticeable.
On the other hand, I'm sure they'd prefer to do other things than
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, yes, it's a rule, so it must be done. Period.
That just points up the stupidity of the rules. Here's a novel idea: save $27 million by changing the rules.
$27 million is nothing ...
Alright then, carry on.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, I'm not defending them. I'm sure with enough information, we'd see who was really benefiting from the change. It could be anyone, from the union finding a way to keep employees on the road (why did it take 6 hours to drive 3 blocks?), to the company supplying the paint and decals (specially reflective, for her pleasure).
There was a reference to the signs being easier for the driver to read, and therefore they didn't look away from the road as long while driving (so they h
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, yes, it's a rule, so it must be done. Period.
That just points up the stupidity of the rules. Here's a novel idea: save $27 million by changing the rules.
Well, they actually do have to follow the rules, and while we could change the rules there seems to be pretty good reasoning behind the rules. Large, reflective, mixed case, with a good font signs are easier to read. This actually reduces the amount of attention that must be diverted by the driver to navigate and in the end reduces collisions caused by that distraction.
Of course, changing the rules arbitrarily could cost even more money, because then those people who are already in compliance would need t
Re: (Score:2)
$110.00 per sign seems a bit steep...
Re: (Score:2)
Including labor, shipping and handling?
Sell the signs (Score:5, Interesting)
The Wall Street signs alone, if auctioned, would probably pay for the whole project.
Re: (Score:2)
While I don't disagree that not changing working signs seems to be a waste of a LOT of money in a tight budget, but I guess my question would be, just how big is the NYC budget overall? In a budget where $25M is less than 1%, it would be easy to see how something could slide through like this.
Besides, the reality is that high-level budget makers aren't involved in how departments spend their money. If the Transportation took budget cuts and this was the only project they were doing in the coming fiscal ye
Re: (Score:2)
Well, if they are smart, they'll auction off the old signs as mementos with an official letter of authenticity.
Re:I've got a better idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, they could give each citizen back... oh. $3.50. Why, you could buy a couple of 20oz bottles of Mt.Dew for that much.
Re:I've got a better idea. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that will be awesome! $27.5 million / 8 years / 8.4 million = a big fat check of $0.41 per year that you'll be getting back! Whoot! That's fucking large!
It would probably cost the city more than that just to organize the refund. People ought to learn to use a calculator. These numbers are microscopic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
OK, then,
Woot! I'm saved $0.41 cents a year!!
Honestly, you could probably find that in change on the ground.
Penny wise, dollar foolish. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because who cares if an ageing driver population can quickly scan signs and return their eyes to the road in an urban area, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Penny wise, dollar foolish. (Score:4, Informative)
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: (Score:2)
TFA said so. Apparently that's why all caps is not the standard. I wasn't able to find a study to cite in 20 seconds, and then I lost interest in the topic.
Re: (Score:2)
Er, since when are all-capital signs hard to read?
Since forever.
That's why things that need to be easy to read (and that are prepared by people that know what they are doing) are written in mixed case, and have been for centuries.
All-caps are used to grab and focus attention, but are harder to read.
At Slashdot, experiments are still of value. (Score:2)
Since people like FHWA and Penn State did experiments (omg with tax dollarz!!1!) and found it out that mixed type was easier and fonts like Clearview make a noticeable difference.
But let's be all Tea Party and trust a random 37 year old maintenance guy instead. [newschannel34.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Aging driver populations should have to re-qualify for driver's exams every year.
And the DOT should be working with the MTA to re-design our city's streets for rapid busses and greater pedestrian and cycling improvements, not wasting time on piddly junk like this.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? And just how do you propose to make thse changes? Are you going to make the sidewalks more narrow, thus giving New Yorkers more ammunition to whine about all the slow-moving tourists who bring billions to their economy each year?
Or perhaps you will knock down some buildings so streets can be widened. Maybe start with the Pan Am Building just north of Grand Central Terminal.
Considering I've
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't want to read a full paragraph of capital letters, mostly because my brain isn't trained to parse them very well, but for older people, it may be easier for them to read if all of the letters are capitalized. If I were to m
Re: (Score:2)
But that is probably just because capitals are larger for a given font size. If you scale the font up so that the average lower-case letter is the size the average capital is now, and then use mixed-case, it will probably be even easier to read.
Re:Penny wise, dollar foolish. (Score:5, Funny)
No one drives in Manhatten anymore, there're too many cars.
Re: (Score:2)
No one. There's too much traffic.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:I've got a better idea. (Score:4, Informative)
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: (Score:2)
Leave the signs as they are, and refund that money to the taxpayers.
Funneling that street-sign money to the transportation services will have a more welcome impact. New York is already expensive, and its unlimited public transportation pass is about to die, so economically that means fewer shopping sprees and reduced tourism.
Visiting Indian/Mexican/wherever tourists making cents of US$ per hour can't spend DOLLARS for transportation like us local wage-earners can earn. "Crisis averted" tag, indeed.
Re: (Score:2)
The only possible reason I can think of is that some readability studies found that mix case text is easier and faster to read than uppercase letters. Maybe there's an argument for reducing wear on roads for missing turns or something, although I can't imagine that the effect overall would amount to 27 million dollars.
Re: (Score:2)
Government signs are actual interesting. There is a lot of thought and science in their design.
It was road signs designers who first understood that people don't need to actually read the whole word. If they have a standard design, and are recognizable, most of the time that's all people needs. If you change the standard people will take the extra moments to read ad register the name.
ok, maybe it's only interesting to me and a handful of others, but the amount of intelligence and smart design that's around
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Because taxpayer money is for maintaining roads, but not for building political monuments.
You buy the land and build your own towers.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is another idea:
You take the time to learn about city operations and then realize that accidents cost the city money and this will actually save money, and lives? It's an 8 year project.
Attrition may take decades in some areas. Do you want to pocket up the money for all the accidents that didn't need to happen?
This is a good sensible decision. But hey, you just keep snuggling up to you arrogance through ignorance.
citation please (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We all know that ACs don't pay Federal Income taxes, so WTF to they care eh?
Re: (Score:2)
"You'll also notice that most of the funding is from the feds."
'the feds' don't fund, they spend. Taxpayers fund.
Re: (Score:2)
FTA, signs last about a decade.
Re: (Score:2)
If anything, capital letters are easier to read
I think they actually did studies that proved the opposite. You know, the kind of studies that perceptual psychologists do when they flash things on a screen and you push a button?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
All caps grabs your attention. It is why we still have STOP and SPEED LIMIT signs. You want driver's eyes to be drawn to them, because the information is important. Street names are not important, unless you are specifically looking for them. So for street name signs mixed case is better, because you can both read it easier when you are looking for a street, but you are not encouraged to look at them otherwise.