Visual pollution

[artme]

Drove out to a friends place tonight and was struck by the clutter of signs along the road - directions,advertising, warnings. You name it, it was there.

Now this can be very ugly but more importantly very distracting, especially where new roadwork is underway.Are local and state authorities blind to this? Are there no rules to govern these things?

Local councils can be very quick to alert the ordinary home owner to breaches of council regulations but are loathe to act on other important issues, such as this.

I find Miami on the Gold Coast to be a visual disaster area and I wince every time I take foreign visitors down that way.

It's time for local councils to get their houses in order and act.

[watson]

Even down south here...the same thing.
Each off ramp looks the same as every off-ramp in the US........except we don't have as many franchises.
You're correct...visual pollution.

[masoth]

I often wonder if these polutants are self seeding. They are like weeds in the garden - popping up every where. The bridge here (between NSW and VIC) has a new one every month, I reckon.

soth

[Wood Borer]

Money crazed business lame brains seem to think that advertising is attractive and contibutes to lining their pockets - it doesn't work that way with me.

No offence Masoth but about 15 years we were on our way to Broken Hill and approaching Mildura. SWMBO, our two kids and I decided to detour into Mildura. We hadn't been there before, SWMBO had some past family connection there and I wanted to see the long bar.

We turned off and were met with a forest of advertising placards, poor taste motels with their tacky advertising, a cop with a radar gun, more tacky signs and it was the second cop with a radar gun that topped it all off (I wasn't booked). Not only did we do a U turn but we all bagged the place vowing never to step foot into Mildura ever again.

Since then I have detoured around Mildura maybe thirty times and I have always bagged the place. The kids are now grown up up and none of us have ever visited the place since.

Mildura business people, Mildura Shire and Mildura Police you do irrepairable damage to the image of your town due to your filthy greed. Your childish, poor taste and pathetic attempt to make $'s has badly backfired.

Like I said Masoth, nothing personal, perhaps it is a good town but I'm not prepared to suffer the visual pollution and threatening cops to find out.

Perhaps others should take similar action to hopefully rid ourselves of these tacky signs.

[Batpig]

Dear Artme,

After Soorley took things over here back in whenever it was, there were these roving crews of chaps that would turn up every year or so and work their way down each side of the main drag, measuring the signage on this side of the road, and photographing the signage on the other side - before swapping sides to reciprocate the process. The bill each year was massive, even for a minimal amount of signage. And they'd get you for everything - even a little mobile A-Frame out on the footpath...

What the Barstools were doing was having an Each-Way-Bet - but with "stacked dice" - for they reckoned that they were effectively "controlling" visual pollution through "Licensing". The only thing was - the licensing process involved nothing more than measuring up the size of your signage, and then "slugging" you accordingly. There was no vetting of gaudy or oversized signs by way of an application process - just measuring the things after they went up, and then slugging you for them. By process of deduction, I guess you'd have to conclude that the signs in question were ugly and visually polluting, until the Annual Signage Fees were paid for them...

Someone will pop up here and say that this is the only truly practical and pragmatic approach to such issues, but it's funny how the pragmatic approaches always seem to end up in making more money for the Regulating Authority in question... (and never seem to succeed in controlling the problem either...)

Best Wishes,
Batpig.

[Waldo]

I was going to post about Soorley and one of his brain waves (he had many) but Batpig got in first.

[Batpig]

Dear Waldo,

My apologies... However, so that you can make good for yourself, you could always tell the lads about Soorley's policy with the sale of Hot Food: ie. If you weren't "Licensed", the Hot Food you sold had to be pre-packaged (ie. like a Mrs Mac Pie or Sausage Roll in a plastic wrapper...), but if you paid the Annual License Fee, you could sell unwrapped Pastries from the very same Pie Warmer... So in other words, paying the Council License Fee suddenly made the formerly unsafe-to-eat, unwrapped Pastries all of a sudden safe to eat...

I await your post...

Hang on! Doh! (Sorry - Did it again!...)

But returning to the issue at hand, and in order to make the point clear, Councils (and Governments at all levels) seem to be far more interested in Revenue than they are in Aesthetics... (or in Health for State Govt, etc..)

Best Wishes,
Batpig.

[Waldo]

Beaten again.

[Chesand]

The intersection of Mt Alexander Rd and Brewster St, Essendon had something like 36 poles from bus stop signs up to electric high tension poles.
Probably more now as it seems impossible for Council workers etc to comsolidate signs but rather put in new posts.

[bluegum30]

i knew there was a reason why i miss so many turnoff's ,for a while i thought it was the early onset of senior moments.Lloyd

[bsrlee]

An excess of road signs has been used as a defence to a number of road offences in NSW, including 'Drive contrary to notice'. I can remember getting files when I spent 6 months at a NSW Police Traffic office in the early 1970's, so its not new either.

My best local one was when the RTA was made to remove a sign as it had completely blocked the footpath to a local in a wheelchair - he couldn't get home as it had been put up in the middle of the day.

They just relocated it, but they had to leave room for people to use the footpath, and there are still 6-8 enforceable traffic signs in less than 100 metres, plus about 12 on the highway as you turn off - you have a choice, read the signs & crash or just keep going & follow the crowd.