As the city wastes millions by changing street signs that are ALL CAPS to Upper & Lower Case — including, ridiculously, numbered signs that, at most, have a tiny “AV” or a “ST” on them, it occurs to me that the millions would be better spent on replacing the signs that actually need replacing. A federal mandate — since rescinded — called for signs in all caps to become caps and lower case, for greater readability.
Many of the city’s green and white street signs were installed in the mid-1980s, when an earlier federal mandate called for highway signs to be rendered in those colors for optimum visibility. Previously, signs were color-coded by borough, with Queens getting blue on white, Bronx white on blue, Brooklyn white on black, Manhattan black on yellow, and for some reason (likely that its previous signs were black on yellow), Staten Island copying the Manhattan colors.
Of course, some of these green and white signs are almost 30 years old and are sun-bleached to the point of unreadability, like this one on 62nd Drive in fab Forest Hills.
Those, however, don’t seem to be the signs the Department of Transportation is targeting for replacement.
That would make altogether too much sense.
7/12/12