January 10, 2003
DIY Traffic Signs
Today's 'Street Beat' column by Joseph Rose has an interesting item from Northeast about residents who were denied speed bumps for their street. After joking about installing their own, they came up with another idea:
Instead, the neighbors pooled together $400 to build something they figured would surely cause drivers who use the street as a shortcut to nearby Fremont Street to brake.
The 8-foot-high green signs with bright white letters read, with an almost 3-D quality, "Caution Children." They stand like sentinels, bolted to power poles, where 51st Avenue intersects with Alameda Street to the south and Stanton Street to the north.
Apparently, some motorists have stopped to ask about obtaining such signs for their own neighborhoods. For some strange reason, the city -- which at one point was considering a ban on using telephone poles for posters and fliers (a project about which I expect an update in the near future) -- has not yet objected to the presence of the signs.