Where Traffic Signs Come From

I recently saw a traffic sign that said: “Thickly Settled.” Since then, I’ve wondered about its meaning and the word choice:

Traffic Signs

The NY Times tells us that NYC has over one million street signs. Each year, 70,000 of those signs come from one red brick warehouse in Queens where they are cut, printed, and assembled by 46 workers. As we might expect, the shop employs letterers and even a blacksmith. Yes, the letterers lay out the letters by hand and a blacksmith fabricates the brackets that attach the signs to poles. An invisible task, those signs need maintenance, updating, and occasionally renaming.

A typical street sign starts as a 12′ x 4′ aluminum sheet that is then cut, gets rounded corners, and holes for mounting. From there, a silk screener takes over to tell us, for example, “No Parking Anytime” on both sides.

If someone wanted that sign to say “Don’t Park Here,” they could not. Specifying words, font, colors, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) mandates consistency.

Our Bottom Line: Transportation Infrastructure

Infrastructure History

An infrastructure is a network of connections. If it’s transport, then those connections include roads and bridges. During the 19th century, a financial infrastructure emerged through a network of banks that connected savers and borrowers. Now, we can add an information infrastructure that began with Benjamin Franklin’s 18th-century postal service. Today it continues online.

Transportation Infrastructure

We could say that our transportation infrastructure started in 1785 when representatives from Maryland and Virginia met at the Mount Vernon Conference to rationalize Potomac navigation. From there we can leap to the Erie Canal. Completed in 1825, it jumpstarted our national market. Connecting Albany and Buffalo NY, the Erie Canal reduced the cost and time needed to ship manufactured goods and crops between the East and West. Next came the 19th-century railroads and the 20th-century highway system.

Now, “Thickly Settled” and countless other traffic signs are a part of our contemporary transportation infrastructure.

My sources and more: Thanks to the NY Times for inspiring today’s post and providing many of its facts.

Our featured image is a MUTCD road sign.