Sign, signEverywhere a signBlockin’ out the sceneryBreakin’ my mindDo this, don’t do thatCan’t you read the sign?
Not much has changed since the 5 Man Electrical Band’s 1971 lament.
If anything, it’s gotten worse.
Signs get put up everywhere in Westport. They never get taken down.
So those from, say, 1971, still clutter our roadways.
We’ve gotten used to them. We don’t even notice them. But they’re there.
Consider this one, on Wilton Road:
(Photo/Dan Woog)
There are a couple of things wrong with this.
- School buses are always stopped ahead. That’s how they roll. If we had a sign for every bus stop here, there would be a global metal shortage.
- I highly doubt that, even in 1971, this sign ever flashed when a school bus stopped. That’s just fantasy.
There’s a newer — but equally obsolete — sign on Roseville Road, headed to McDonald’s.
“Construction Ahead,” it warns. “Road Use Restricted. State Liability Limited.”
It was valid during the 27 centuries that the Post Road renovation project was underway.
But it’s been finished for months. There is indeed improvement at the Roseville and Hillspoint intersections.
Now it’s time to recycle the sign, for another project somewhere else.
Then there’s the laughable “5 MPH” sign at Staples High School, heading toward the fieldhouse by the parking lot hill.
(Photo/Dan Woog)
It’s almost impossible to drive 5 miles an hour. The average speed of someone walking is 3 MPH.
My speedometer does not even show 5 MPH. It starts at 10.
So what’s next?
Let’s ask our town officials — 1st selectman, Public Works director, Police — to get rid of every outdated, superfluous, meaningless, or otherwise cluttering-up-our-landscape sign.
In a town and era in which everyone yaps about everything, this would unite every Westporter, of every age and political persuasion, in joy and wonder.
And how will they know which signs to uproot and unscrew?
This is an “06880” crowdsourcing project. Readers: Click “Comments” below. Let our leaders know which signs you think should be removed.
Westport: We can do this All signs point to victory!
PS: After we’re done with “official” signs, we can tackle those on private property.
Let’s start with this:
Seriously? Has this ever happened in Westport?
I’m so sure it didn’t, I’ll give a free 1-year subscription to “06880” to anyone who can prove otherwise.
See how easy it is to make stuff up?!
(We’re not making this up: “06880” relies on reader support. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation — and show us a “sign” that you like our work. Thank you!)
HMMMM; remember folks, we live in a town where only the town (by far the most frequent use of gasoline leaf blowers) is allowed to pollute the air from May15-Oct 15, so how can we expect the TOWN to obey it’s own ordinance that temporary signs are just that…temporary
How about petitioning the ordinance, as originally planned, to RTM?
It was watered down to nothing because of the desires of the prior FS, so let’s give Mr Christie the opportunity to support a better ordinance.
Yep, they’re all either obsolete or pointless or both. For the 13 years that I lived on Wilton Road and the three-plus decades I lived in Westport, I never saw that sign’s lights flash. FWIW, the sign sits at the top of a downhill blind curve that drivers are prone to take too fast, but I doubt it has any effect on driver behaviour. The chief purpose of the orange construction sign is not to warn you that there is construction ahead. It is to warn you that if you have an accident the state has no liability – you are on your own and any accident in the construction zone is presumptively your fault, no matter how negligent the state or its contractors may have been. And in classic bureaucratic fashion, the more important the point, the smaller the font. The 5 mph sign can only be there for laughs.
Has anyone ever been ticketed for doing 10 in a 5 zone?
Probably not, but by the standard every speed limit sign is enforced, better to say 5 and have people go 15 than say 15 and have them go 25.
Hardly “laughable” at all.
I often wonder about a simple STOP sign, and how many folks just cruise through, daily. Additionally, I wish there was a way to discourage the placement of all of the junky yard signs. From what I understand, they are permitted only for non-profits, and of course the abundance political campaign signs during election periods. Need your holiday lights strung?
That bus sign on Wilton road used to work!! It was for only one house. When I would take the bus to kings highway in the 90’s there was a kid that lived right around the blind corner. Our awesome bus driver (Judy) sometimes gave me the job of clicking the garage door like clicker when we drove past it and turned around at the red barn to come back down the street.
Check out all the No Parking any time signs along Hillspoint Rd along the beautiful sidewalk. Way too many, not placed near telephone poles but between them, and all facing the homeowners and not the drivers. What a hot mess— who was thinking when they installed those??? Was there ever a parking problem???
I guess it’s a’sign of the times’
Petula Clark reference?
I’ll sign up for this sign deletion project!
Just tell me where to sign in!!
**Noted, Ignored**
The stop sign had one job for a hundred years. One word. Eight sides. Can’t mess it up.
Then a car with seventeen cameras and the processing power of a small moon drove straight through its entire worldview without even slowing down, and the stop sign just had to stand there and take it.
The yield sign is handling it worse. It spent decades teaching drivers to use judgment. The car has better judgment. The yield sign is now a philosophy professor whose students all got smarter than him.
Speed limit signs will be the last to go. The cars will read them, calculate optimal road conditions, and travel at exactly 24.6 mph. Close enough. Nobody updates anything until someone complains. Nobody complains.
The saddest will be the downtown directory maps. Frozen in 2004. Confidently pointing to a Blockbuster. The self-driving car will scan it, cross-reference current satellite data, and quietly feel sorry for it.
At least the signs had the decency to be outside. Somewhere right now there is a business card in a wallet, printed in 1997, still listing a fax number. Confident. Professional. Right there between the phone and the email. FAX: 1-800-nothing-works-anymore. Nobody has thrown it out because nobody has looked at it since the Clinton administration.
The fax number and the stop sign deserve each other. Both still technically present. Both absolutely certain they matter. Both wrong.
We spent a century leaving notes for strangers.
Turns out the strangers stopped needing notes.
The signs are just there now, like a voicemail nobody listened to, still blinking.
By the way, 100% agree. The sheer volume of signs everywhere has me humming Signs by Five Man Electrical Band on a loop. Pure visual pollution.
And the worst part is we can’t help ourselves. A sign exists and the brain just reads it. Involuntary. You’re not even interested. You didn’t ask. But there it is — NEXT GAS 47 MILES — lodged in your head forever now, rent free, crowding out something actually worth thinking about.
FSD gives that back. Passenger seat, window, actual thoughts. The road becomes scenery instead of a quiz.
I love this article so much, you have no idea. This is one of my pet peeves. Also, election signs left up months to years after the election. Please, ffs…
Lest we forget, its important to take a moment every day, and pay homage to the truly “deep” road signs — ones that are timeless reminders of the interconnectedness of all things. You stop in awe as you finally take in the profound spiritual meanings of YIELD… MERGE… SLOW… CAUTION… NO OUTLET… and of course, WRONG WAY.
our recreation department has more tasteless and/or illegal signs than any department in Westport. Most exceed the maximum allowable size of our local businesses.
I like the sign in Southport on Sasco Hill Road. It tells you the speed limit and as you approach it, it tells you how fast you are going. When you slow down to 25, it says Thank You. Very validating.
Do you thank it back? I always do. I’m a Westporter.
Could not agree with this more. In addition to significantly cleaning up the general aesthetic around town, removing signs that nobody has any intention of enforcing prevents people that do try to abide by them feel like suckers for following them. “No left turn” out of the hardware store / Pottery Barn parking lot? Meh? That only applies to other people! “Do Not Enter” for those trying to exit on the entry side of the Greens Farms Station parking loop? Surely only lesser people have to abide by the unidirectional layout. Every “no turn on red” sign in town (though notable that most are completely illegible at night anyway). Any “yield to pedestrian” crosswalk signs in town
Clearly every one of these was placed for a reason, likely to ensure everybody’s safety. But that notion seems beyond the people that will offer a dismissive “who cares?” or “why does it matter?” if called out on the point. And based on the way none of these are ever enforced, they’re right.
So, unless there’s a renewed effort to enforce the signs we do have, rip all but the most essential out. At least then we’re all operating off the same playbook and nobody has the expectation that people that ignore them should behave any differently.
Worse than the ancient signs are the trees and bushes that block stop signs and other useful/necessary traffic signs. Does someone from the town ever check to determine whether such signs are blocked.
Don’t just remove the sign. Remove the sign POST. And don’t just cut it off a foot above the ground. Actually remove it. When they chop the sign posts 6 inches from the ground the grass grows to make it invisible to the walker or to the driver who is pulling over because of car trouble.
Classic!
5mph is not enforceable.
Ditch the sign and the wood pile corner next to Mcdonalds!