So much armchair quarterbacking in this thread. As a long time LA resident, these signs are a huge improvement over the current system of just adding multiple signs on the same pole. Many times I have to spend 5 minutes calculating whether or not you can park, and for how long. Here's a perfect example, and not unusual to see. https://i.imgur.com/wyQsMTv.jpg I can't wait for these new signs. "Perfect is the enemy of good."
Advantages of new signs
- consolidates parking restrictions in one easy to read graphic
Advantages of old signs
- can easily swap out restrictions by adding or removing signs
IMO it's not very difficult once you get used to it. Remember that the default is "parking is always OK" and add restrictions as you read top to bottom. Of course, each municipality may have its own "default" rules. The City of Los Angeles can tow you after 72 hours on the same street, and Pasadena has no parking 2-6am every day.
In theory, swapping out restrictions should be a matter of checking some boxes on a web form or something, which would generate an appropriate image and send it to a printer, with - based on a quick Google - at most a few days' turnaround time, for (possibly well) below $100 per sign.
In practice, their process will probably be less efficient :)
I like the design of the new signs, but is it easy to read? I'm not a driver and I have pretty bad vision, but it seems like it would be hard to understand from the driver's seat.
As far as I remember she ran a guerilla campaign, posting these signs all over the city. My understanding is she did it for the betterment of the town and possibly her portfolio.
The problem with simpler rules is that it would basically be "No Parking, Anytime".
Often, the reason parking is prohibited during certain times is to open the lane up for rush-hour. If the rule had to be simplified, I think traffic decongestion would win over parking availability. Now imagine that same stretch of road gets sweeped every Tuesday at 2PM. The simplest rule to cover these situations—and still allow parking at all—has to somehow be communicated.
I don't care too much for the signs in the linked article, but I hate even more the existing signs that are all hodge-podgy. At least these signs standardize the information somewhat, so even if they are complicated to read, once you get used to them you'll be able to grok it at a glance.
And then it becomes "No parking until 2pm unless you have a green permit, in which case you can park until 5pm. Except if that green permit has a blue diamond in the corner, which means you can't park here for more than three hours".
Attaching a small solar panel to the top of the pole would take care of the energy problem. You can draw power from the grid at night (when there's spare capacity), or use a battery (a bit more costly).
What do the sections that are green but have no (P) icon or time limit? Unlimited parking? The legend doesn't say.
It's also interesting to note that the section heights are not proportional; they range from 1 hour per unit during morning rush to 7 hours for mid-day. At first glance, it makes it seem parking is prohibited for nearly half the day during the work week, while in actuality it's just 4 hours.
Ugh, that looks overly complex especially if you want to read it before parking (or at least getting out of your car). Solar powered LEDs are really cheap; we actually have a bunch of lights around my way that are entirely run off of solar with batteries for night. Why can't the schedule be programmed and a crude digital sign display where you can park and for how long? Maybe say loading and unloading only at times?
I have a hard enough time explaining to users how to do simply things on a computer or hell even read directions; this seems like a pain to me.
They can hook them into the power grid for fallback if necessary but that doesn't really matter; simple metal signs also can have issues (spray paint, hit by car, stickers, etc) and I don't see anyone saying we shouldn't do those as they don't have a fallback.
Sure they're more expensive but solar is pretty cheap and it will allow them to modify and adapt to changing parking / driving patterns preventing more print runs of the signs in the future and possibly optimizing. Seems like a good way to spend money to me at least compared to a lot of other, more wasteful uses of tax money.
The issues you list for metal signs apply to electronic signs too, meaning they have even more potential problems.
Wiring them all would be a significant expense for councils.
I'd bet that reissuing metal signs is still going to be far more efficient. I'd be looking at ways to simplify use of the streets first. Sometimes low-tech solutions work best.
Sorry, let me rephrase. Some parts of the city say things like No Parking unless with permit (for residents of the street). Or, what about 2 Hr parking unless Sunday or Holiday? Or what about 8-10AM street sweeping every other Monday. I feel like the new design doesn't solve for this.
Fatal flaw: the red / green bars have no context because the the hours & days text is unreadable except up close and hour/days change from sign to sign.
EDIT: also impossible to read when driving / stopping by in your car. You'd have to roll down your window or maybe even get out to read everything.
I think these new signs are strictly better than the old signs. If you can make them more betterer then I and the rest of the world would love to see it. Someone random from the internet redesigning signs is how these came about. Let's see what you got.
I'm not the parent poster, but I am colorblind. The green and red bars of these signs are difficult to discriminate for me, and I suspect many others.
The design could easily be improved by using different colors, since ~10% of males have some color vision deficiency. Few people have deficiency in their short-wavelength cones (blue), so blue/yellow could work, or better still would be simple black and white, or some sort of spatial modulation difference (solid/striped or border/no border).
So the stripes are too faint to make the red areas sufficiently distinct?
The obvious problem with an alternate color scheme is that it wouldn't instantly convey 'good or bad' in the way green and red do (to people with adequate color perception).
The stripes are too close together, and the contrast is low. They're subtle up close, and difficult to see from a distance. If the spatial frequency were lower (larger stripes) and if they used alternating lines of white and the current color, it might be alright.
Well.. having lived in LA you pretty much figure it out after your first parking ticket.. and you usually are guaranteed to get a parking ticket within the first year you move there. I expect these new signs to cause confusion, at least initially, and generate revenue for the city (that's probably a good thing though).
