LA's Proposed Parking Signs | Hacker News Reader

LA's Proposed Parking Signs

wired.com

53 pointsprostoalex52 comments

So much armchair quarterbacking in this thread. As a long time LA resident, these signs are a huge improvement over the current system of just adding multiple signs on the same pole. Many times I have to spend 5 minutes calculating whether or not you can park, and for how long. Here's a perfect example, and not unusual to see. https://i.imgur.com/wyQsMTv.jpg I can't wait for these new signs. "Perfect is the enemy of good."

Advantages of new signs - consolidates parking restrictions in one easy to read graphic

Advantages of old signs - can easily swap out restrictions by adding or removing signs

IMO it's not very difficult once you get used to it. Remember that the default is "parking is always OK" and add restrictions as you read top to bottom. Of course, each municipality may have its own "default" rules. The City of Los Angeles can tow you after 72 hours on the same street, and Pasadena has no parking 2-6am every day.

I like the design of the new signs, but is it easy to read? I'm not a driver and I have pretty bad vision, but it seems like it would be hard to understand from the driver's seat.

Regarding "easily swap out" -

In theory, swapping out restrictions should be a matter of checking some boxes on a web form or something, which would generate an appropriate image and send it to a printer, with - based on a quick Google - at most a few days' turnaround time, for (possibly well) below $100 per sign.

In practice, their process will probably be less efficient :)

The one at the top is obviously photoshopped.

I don't think it is. The photo quality just sucks.

The top one indicates Street Sweeping.

>Husting thought Sylianteng’s design was a good concept to run with (Sylianteng wasn’t paid for the project)

Wow. That's a shame, to say the least, unless she chose specifically to do this out of charity.

As far as I remember she ran a guerilla campaign, posting these signs all over the city. My understanding is she did it for the betterment of the town and possibly her portfolio.

The new signs are a better way to display a complicated schedule, but have they ever considered just simplifying the rules?

The problem with simpler rules is that it would basically be "No Parking, Anytime".

Often, the reason parking is prohibited during certain times is to open the lane up for rush-hour. If the rule had to be simplified, I think traffic decongestion would win over parking availability. Now imagine that same stretch of road gets sweeped every Tuesday at 2PM. The simplest rule to cover these situations—and still allow parking at all—has to somehow be communicated.

I don't care too much for the signs in the linked article, but I hate even more the existing signs that are all hodge-podgy. At least these signs standardize the information somewhat, so even if they are complicated to read, once you get used to them you'll be able to grok it at a glance.

How about an LED sign that just says "YES" or "NO"?

Edit: I guess energy would be a concern though :(

e-ink?

There is more information you'd have to communicate. Like how long I can leave my car in this spot before I have to move it.

YES

It could be conveyed: "no parking until 2PM" or "parking until 5PM" or "parking for 15 minutes."

We'll have self driving cars before intelligent city street signs, then just let the cars figure out where they can park.

And then it becomes "No parking until 2pm unless you have a green permit, in which case you can park until 5pm. Except if that green permit has a blue diamond in the corner, which means you can't park here for more than three hours".

None of the signs I see on the webpage have those conditions, though.

Attaching a small solar panel to the top of the pole would take care of the energy problem. You can draw power from the grid at night (when there's spare capacity), or use a battery (a bit more costly).

What do the sections that are green but have no (P) icon or time limit? Unlimited parking? The legend doesn't say.

It's also interesting to note that the section heights are not proportional; they range from 1 hour per unit during morning rush to 7 hours for mid-day. At first glance, it makes it seem parking is prohibited for nearly half the day during the work week, while in actuality it's just 4 hours.

There's no way to indicate a 2hour street cleaning day on any of these signs. What's the most common street sign in SF/LA?

That day would get its own column. Look at the 4-Column Sign example in the article.

EDIT: I just realized sweeping isn't always a weekly thing. So yeah, there would still have to be another sign for that.

Here's a rather lengthy discussion of a similar redesign that began in LA:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923196

This one is just an update of that one.

The original designer, Nikki Sylianteng, is cited in the Wired article.

Ugh, that looks overly complex especially if you want to read it before parking (or at least getting out of your car). Solar powered LEDs are really cheap; we actually have a bunch of lights around my way that are entirely run off of solar with batteries for night. Why can't the schedule be programmed and a crude digital sign display where you can park and for how long? Maybe say loading and unloading only at times?

I have a hard enough time explaining to users how to do simply things on a computer or hell even read directions; this seems like a pain to me.

No fallback (battery failure, etc) and more expensive.

They can hook them into the power grid for fallback if necessary but that doesn't really matter; simple metal signs also can have issues (spray paint, hit by car, stickers, etc) and I don't see anyone saying we shouldn't do those as they don't have a fallback.

Sure they're more expensive but solar is pretty cheap and it will allow them to modify and adapt to changing parking / driving patterns preventing more print runs of the signs in the future and possibly optimizing. Seems like a good way to spend money to me at least compared to a lot of other, more wasteful uses of tax money.

The issues you list for metal signs apply to electronic signs too, meaning they have even more potential problems.

Wiring them all would be a significant expense for councils.

I'd bet that reissuing metal signs is still going to be far more efficient. I'd be looking at ways to simplify use of the streets first. Sometimes low-tech solutions work best.

I first thought based on the shape of the first sign this was an app. Some city should make an app that gives this info based on your location.

Next best thing - note the QR code near the bottom of the sign.

The QR code on the sign accomplishes essentially the same thing.

It's a sign of the times that any rectangle with rounded corners and features like a circle bottom-center evokes "smartphone" or "app".

The left one is reminiscent of an iPhone, and the right one an iPad.

The signs have bluetooth beacons for this purpose, though i havn't heard of an app for them yet.

I'll just use red-green colorblindness as an excuse to park any time.

You haven't read the article. The signs should work for color blind people too because of the stripes.

Are there any examples of how they're going to handle permits, holidays, exemptions, etc?

Temporary signage, just like they do today. Permits are already addressed.

Sorry, let me rephrase. Some parts of the city say things like No Parking unless with permit (for residents of the street). Or, what about 2 Hr parking unless Sunday or Holiday? Or what about 8-10AM street sweeping every other Monday. I feel like the new design doesn't solve for this.

Isn't too small to read from a distance?

Doesn't matter. The rules for parking spaces in LA are usually complicated enough that you have to stop to read them anyway.

But not from 10 feet away like these ones.

Current signs are legible 50 feet or further - and more important legible while you're still in your car.

there's no indication for street cleaning for "first Monday/Anyday of the month".

Two sample takes from a smart LA blog:

Against: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2015/04/new_parking_signs_...

For: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2015/04/and_a_vote_for_the...

They should have made the QR codes bigger, so it would be easier for your car to read them while you're driving down the street.

Bad signs.

Fatal flaw: the red / green bars have no context because the the hours & days text is unreadable except up close and hour/days change from sign to sign.

EDIT: also impossible to read when driving / stopping by in your car. You'd have to roll down your window or maybe even get out to read everything.

I think these new signs are strictly better than the old signs. If you can make them more betterer then I and the rest of the world would love to see it. Someone random from the internet redesigning signs is how these came about. Let's see what you got.

I'm not the parent poster, but I am colorblind. The green and red bars of these signs are difficult to discriminate for me, and I suspect many others.

The design could easily be improved by using different colors, since ~10% of males have some color vision deficiency. Few people have deficiency in their short-wavelength cones (blue), so blue/yellow could work, or better still would be simple black and white, or some sort of spatial modulation difference (solid/striped or border/no border).

So the stripes are too faint to make the red areas sufficiently distinct?

The obvious problem with an alternate color scheme is that it wouldn't instantly convey 'good or bad' in the way green and red do (to people with adequate color perception).

The stripes are too close together, and the contrast is low. They're subtle up close, and difficult to see from a distance. If the spatial frequency were lower (larger stripes) and if they used alternating lines of white and the current color, it might be alright.

To me it would just seem more intuitive to have time go from down-->up. These signs seem to do the exact opposite.

ENGINEER?

TRAFFIC

ARE YOU A

Reply on news.ycombinator.com