Councillor Shelley Carroll

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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

New Street Signs in Toronto

FYI

Making street signs clearer, more visable


The City of Toronto is taking steps to ensure a high quality, coordinated and well designed public realm for residents. We’re taking this approach with street signs – an important part of the urban landscape.

The new signs are clearer, easier to read and will create a consistent look throughout the city. As well, we’ve made it possible for special neighbourhoods to be recognized on the new signs.

The signs are made of aluminium and have three basic components. The central piece is common to all signs and features highly reflective blue sheeting with upper and lower case reflective white lettering. This results in a consistent, easy to read street name.

The upper “blade” provides an opportunity to place the name of a distinctive neighbourhood or community or local business improvement area. The lower “blade” is used to show the closest address number to the intersection. A common mechanism is used to attach the signs to the existing poles.

Two different sizes are used for the signs. Larger signs 96.5 cm. (38 in) in length will be used on major roads where there are multiple lanes and higher speeds. On residential streets, the signs will be 76 cm. (30 in) in length.

It’s expected that between 2,000 and 2,500 signs will be replaced each year. Signs are replaced when they are damaged, faded or missing.

City staff is developing a process to allow residents to purchase decommissioned street name signs that need to be replaced due to age or damage. Various options for purchasing these signs are currently being investigated.

We hope you will like the new signs. We are confident that they will improve safety on our streets as well as provide a clearer, more consistent image for our city.