Sign, sign, everywhere a sign: Edmontonians frustrated with barrage of street signs

While dropping off her son at a friend's house in the Queen Alexandra neighbourhood, Candace Elliott was struck by the "jungle of yellow signs" in the area.

The gleaming yellow diamonds and white rectangles guided the way through a playground zone around 105th Street and 76th Avenue. 

"When you drive down it, you're thinking all I'm doing is looking at signs," Elliott said. "I'm not even paying attention. There's just too much clutter."

Elliott has noticed more and more signs popping up since she moved to Edmonton in 1995.

She said the problem isn't that signs tell her what to do — it's that they are redundant. There comes a limit to how much information can be processed when trying to focus on driving, she said.

"I like the signs, I like the 30 in the school zone, but I just wonder if it's a little confusing for drivers and a little hard to concentrate on looking straight ahead when you're reading so many signs," Elliott said.  

"Maybe we don't need three signs saying 30 [kilometres per hour] all the way through," she added.

And, just like the 1971 Five Man Electrical Band song goes, signs block out the scenery.

As a photographer, Elliott thinks they ruin the view and throw off the aesthetics.

'Traffic sign acid trip'

Melinda Edwards has lived across from Our Lady of Mount Carmel School for 13 years. She has seen the complete redevelopment of the neighbourhood with bike lanes installed and new signs to alert people to the changes.

"I like to describe it as being in a kaleidoscope on a traffic sign acid trip because you're just inundated," Edwards said.

Edwards said the number of signs can be overwhelming for an inexperienced driver.

"It's visual pollution," Edwards said.

"It's almost a safety issue because it's just signs as opposed to paying attention to anything else," she added.

A clear purpose

Every situation on a roadway needs to be signed appropriately, said Andrew Siggelkow, senior transportation engineer at the City of Edmonton.

The city uses the Transportation Association of Canada's guidelines, which are called the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

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The signs Edmonton installs are consistent with those guidelines, Siggelkow said.

For areas like 105th Street and 76th Avenue, there's room in the national guidelines for "professional judgment" with installation, he added.

"In that area, each sign has a clear purpose for all road users, but in that area there is a lot going on with the chosen use for the road as well as the land," Siggelkow said.

In the span of a few blocks, there are roads, a school with a playground zone, crosswalks and bike lane infrastructure  that all require signage to inform motorists. 

Siggelkow thinks the signs are not redundant, based on what the public needs to know, especially if it's a visitor who might not be familiar with the area.

He said the roadway is designed so that everyone gets the same message.

For example, those 30 km/h signs for pedestrian lights and playground zones both need to be up because the playground zone is time specific. When it's out of that timeframe, the pedestrian sign is still in effect, he said.

The onus is on drivers to understand signs before they hit the road, Siggelkow said. He wants people to drive to the conditions to make sure "they can take in all of these messages."

"To keep the roadways safe and to ensure that everyone is operating as they should, these signs are required in those areas for that enforcement to take place," he said.  

If you're unsure of a sign's meaning, or how playground zones or bike lanes work, Siggelkow recommends checking out the city's website.