Have you seen the new regulatory signs along our roadways? You may not know that these are new, unless you drive by them at night. You’ll know it’s a new sign as the reflection from your headlights will be very bright. Some say it almost blinds you. I don’t know about that but do know you can tell the difference.
What has happened is the federal government has changed the standards for signage for any public street, highway or bicycle trail open to the public. The new standard deals with retroreflectivity as many signs were difficult, at best, to see in the dark hours. Due to age the reflective qualities of older signs are greatly diminished. With this new approach, signs will need to meet new standards for reflectivity on an ongoing basis.
Meeting the new requirements requires the city adopt a policy concerning the maintenance of signs. What this means is signs need to be reviewed for night time visibility (reflective qualities) and replaced when they no longer meet the requirements. Doing this involves the adoption of a policy concerning how this will be achieved.
In Breezy Point the City Council adopted a policy concerning the maintenance of signs. The policy provides that in meeting the law we will replace signs on a routine planned basis. This helps to minimize costs. Inspections will be used to determine if a sign meets the standards but the policy also provides that signs must be replaced on a periodic basis. It is anticipated that the duration of sign use would be 10-12 years. All signs would be replaced on this schedule, at a minimum.
This effort is not cheap. Each sign, like stop signs, cost about $100 per sign to replace. Eliminating signs that don’t provide benefit keeps our costs down. Under the policy some signs will be eliminated. Keeping the costs in check is also being done with a phased approach to installation. All regulatory signs need to be replaced by January of 2015. All overhead guide and street name signs will be replaced by January 2018.
The city has an inventory of all signs within the city. We have started the process of replacement and an annual budget has been prepared to address these replacements. To meet the ongoing needs of replacement our annual cost will be about $5,500. This mandate has increased our sign budget dramatically over the past when we only replaced stolen or damaged signs. Safety is important and we understand the need for change but given economic conditions it’s a tough time to make this transition but necessary.
Given the new approach to signage we’ll be safer and hopefully we won’t get lost in the dark of night.
