Searching for a sign

By Jason Dailey, Director, Public Works

There seems to be an exception to the general rule that what goes up, comes down. I’m thinking of traffic advisory signs, warning signs, regulatory signs, informational signs, marker signs, and so on. They seem to accumulate to the point where they can overwhelm any driver who is not already familiar with that particular stretch of roadway.

So how many signs do we have in Cranberry? And whose responsibility are they? Good questions, and nobody really knows the answers. But to find out, we’ve begun to take a systematic inventory thousands of official signs posted along Township roads – where they are, what they say, and what condition they’re in.

So we’ve got crews out with GPS equipment to record exactly where each sign post is located, what the sign says, and how easy it is to read. We’re using a tool we bought together with our local Council of Governments to measure each sign’s reflectivity. If it’s faded, it flunks the test and has to be replaced or taken down.

Part of the impetus for this project is Cranberry’s ongoing effort to catalog its assets – a project that began with our water and sewer system, and is now extending to our traffic signs. Another part is a long-overdue Federal Highway Administration mandate about road signs together with a timetable for states and local governments to get their acts together.

When it’s complete, we will not only know what we already have, we will also have a policy about posting new ones in cases where no specific state or federal mandates are available to guide us. And by then we will all have become fluent in sign language.