Road signs never die, they’re just reassigned

We’re taking a detour today.

An avid Street Smarts reader called me one day wondering about his Everett neighbor’s propensity to decorate with street signs of various sorts. Is that even legal?

(And what would we call that? Cabby chic? Mid-intersection modern?)

Anyway, to answer Bill Selia’s question, I turned to Everett spokeswoman Meghan Pembroke, who pointed to RCW 46.61.075, which prohibits private entities from displaying unauthorized signs at any highway, or advertising with any sign or signal that mimics an official traffic control device.

“So while the public can own them, they can’t point them at the street,” Pembroke said.

This particular decorating scheme is in an alley. So, assuming the signs were legally obtained, the neighbor’s directional-formal approach to landscape design is legit.

But, this raised a very interesting topic for me. So I followed the neighbor’s arrows onto various proverbial rabbit trails.

Exit 1: How to get signs

You can just buy a sign.

National Barricade Co. LLC makes thousands of road signs out of its Marysville manufacturing center. A great many of them — street signs, speed limit signs and more — are seen on our daily travels in Everett, Lynnwood and beyond.

But the company’s customers include the personal as well as the municipal.

“Every once in awhile we get a request for somebody who wants to put in ‘Jonathan’s Way,’ and we’ll make those,” said Garth Regudon, a sales manager.

A basic street sign is one thing. Depending on the level of authenticity you’re looking for, sign manufacturers charge from under $20 to nearly $50 for a basic green and white, rounded-corner rectangle of, oh, say, “Street Smarts St.”

Beyond that, it gets spendy.

Is it likely someone really bought that massive stop sign with high intensity prismatic reflective features conforming to regulations in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices Section 2A.07 paragraph 2 with minimum sign contrast ratio as listed in Table 2A-3 footnote 4?

“If you had a bunch of ‘stop signs’ and ‘one ways’ and ‘do not enters,’ I’d be curious where you’d got them,” Regudon said.

In other words, keep your receipts.

Exit 2: When signs expire

If your name is Norman, Myrtle or you just really like Rainier, you could also try your luck with the city of Seattle.

The city is selling its old street signs to the public as it replaces them.

It appears unique, though. I checked around and, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Colby in Everett or I-5 anywhere will be coming up for sale any time soon.

So what does happen when a sign is ready to head down the road into the sunset?

If they’re in good shape, they’ll be reused.

Once a month, Everett hands off its sign blanks to a Portland-based refurbisher who then hydrostrips the old sheeting and resurfaces the blank. “The city then reuses the blank to make new signs in our sign shop at a reduced cost over purchasing new blanks,” Pembroke said.

Signs are almost universally made of aluminum. So if a sign is damaged beyond reuse, then the city sends it to National Barricade for recycling. “They credit the city of Everett 90 percent of the value of the recycled aluminum to be applied as a credit to purchase new blanks or sheeting,” Pembroke said.

Exit 3: Follow the trail

There are other ways signs are reused, too.

I’m waving now to reader Bill Kusler of Snohomish, who wrote to tell me about a different way street signs have been appearing out of context around here.

“We are so lucky to have our Centennial Trail, and I have really enjoyed the markers discussing the history of the area. These markers were painted on the backs of unused street signs which was a great idea,” Kusler wrote. “I am wondering if anyone has considered painting the backs of the markers to cover up these former signs. It would really enhance their appearance.”

Yes, perhaps, but it was kinda the point.

Snohomish County engineer Owen Carter talked to the sign shop and offered up more information about this project.

The signs were the brainchild of Wendy Becker of the county’s Office of Economic Development as a way to show how the county repurposes signs in different ways.

“We purposely did not want to cover the back because we wanted to see that the signs were once used for roadway signs and that we are recycling them and using them in another application,” Carter wrote.

Most of the county’s expired signs are recycled.

Some of the other creative ways the county reuses signs include cutting them up to make mounting brackets for flashing lights on barricades.

Some 30-inch signs are cut into 3-inch strips, bent into a hook, then nailed to the bottom of a sign post that is then buried in the ground. The hook acts as an anti-theft device.

Which I guess brings us full circle in our little detour.

So I’ll put this thing in park — and leave the stop sign where it is.

Have a question? Email me at streetsmarts@heraldnet.com. Please include your first and last name and city of residence. Look for updates on our Street Smarts blog at www.heraldnet.com/streetsmarts.