St. George: signs, signs, everywhere signs

St. George is getting new street signs, part of a broader effort to make the new city look and feel like its own place. You can see the signs along Perkins Road, starting near the city limits at Bluebonnet and heading toward Siegen Lane.

The details: Mayor Dustin Yates says the city is starting with major thoroughfares, then moving into neighborhoods over time as signs need to be replaced.

• City engineers designed the signs, including the font and style. An internal group chose the final look.
• A private firm is making them, though Yates did not have the company’s name or costs at top of mind last week.
• The signs are a mashup of colors. Yates says white signs are for east-west roads, blue signs for north-south. But RedEye reporters have also seen brown signs, such as the ones on Perkins Road last week.
• Some intersections now have duplicate signs, but the older ones will come down when power is shifted from them to new ones.

The split: As usual, Facebook and Reddit have turned civic hardware into a culture war. St. George supporters like the new look. Critics say the signs are unnecessary. “The older signs were better, easier to read,” one person wrote. “Huge waste of money.”

A lesson in signs:

• Traffic engineers generally favor white-on-green street signs because they are easy to read at driving speeds. Brown is usually used for parks, historic districts and cultural areas.
• For readability, high contrast matters most. White on green is excellent at driving speeds. Black on white is excellent in daylight. White on brown is readable, but usually not quite as strong because brown reflects less light.

The bigger picture: Yates says the signs are part of a larger push to establish St. George’s identity and improve basic infrastructure. The city has already striped more than 100 miles of road, improved drainage, and is beginning to add landscaping at entrances.

The bottom line: The signs are a small thing carrying a larger message: St. George is no longer just a new boundary on a map. It’s a city trying to come into its own.