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Citizen complaint of the day: What's the meaning of these Nubian Square street signs?
By adamg on Mon, 05/06/2024 - 11:30am
A perplexed citizen files a 311 report about some street signs at Dudley and Warren streets in Roxbury:
What do the #+x symbols on the street signs mean?
Google Street Views show the symbols were there in October, 2022 but not November, 2020.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
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Comments
I know it's nit-picky
I know it's nit-picky but the lettering should be all caps too, per BTD specs:
https://www.boston.gov/sites/default/files/file/document_files/2017/03/s...
The BTD published spec is outdated
Since 2009, the MUTCD requires legends on street name signs to be mixed-case lettering. Signs with uppercase lettering can remain in place until they are no longer serviceable. However, these are brand new signs.
MGL Chapter 85, Section 2, requires that all signs and other trafffic control devices conform to “the Department’s manual on uniform traffic control”. The Department meaning MassDOT, which has adopted the Federal MUTCD.
Thank you for the update.
I do find the all-caps signs much easier to read, this feels like a step backward.
It's generally accepted that
It's generally accepted that readability is reduced with all caps...
wrong
Capital letters are not more legible than mixed case. They're less legible.
Lack Of Mixed Case - A Problem Looking For A Problem
Before Going After All The Uppercase Street Signs, The Feds Should Do Something About All Those Massachusetts Stop Signs Which Are In The Wrong Font.
Why Has This Been Allowed To Slide For So Many Years?
Some Day I’ll Send The City A Foia Request To Find Out What Supplier Sells These Junk Signs. Then I’ll Ask The Supplier What Their Problem Is.
Aren't those instructions for NATO troops?
I mean for after they invade U.S.A. and take over all state governments?
I have no idea. I only go
I have no idea. I only go through there late at night on Sundays if I miss the 21 bus.
Hashtag used to be the number sign so maybe it's a cypher?
Wild Guess
Totally spitballing here, but I wonder if those aren't characters that are inserted for proper spacing between the name and "street" end of the sign. It would keep spacing consistent when applying the lettering to the blank, and you can just skip transferring them, assuming these signs are transferred rather than printed. Could also be a "first day on the job and we don't have the time to fix it" sort of deal.
A boo-boo then
A boo-boo then
Obviously it's
Street sign pronouns. Get with it folks.
Bingo!
.
If this were Littleton NH....
...a certain NH state rep would have found hidden religious messages, "something sinister, a sign of societal decline."
Perhaps they're secret messages to an army of occupation
I remember a number of years ago someone claimed there were cryptic symbols on Interstate highway signs that supposedly pointed the way to Amtrak's Beech Grove shops near Indianapolis. The Amtrak shops were actually a death camp, supposedly, and the symbols on the signs were there to direct prisoner caravans. There was a Usenet post that mentioned "French-made guillotines" that had us all cackling hysterically.
Oh, and the kicker? If the shops weren't a death camp, why did they have all those railroad tracks?