Evanston aldermen will get a report tonight on the possibility of adding more street cleaning signs at mid-block locations on residential streets after complaints that the signs — now posted at each end of the block — are too hard to read.
The city staff report says it would cost about $40,000 to add 2,500 new signs and about 1,250 new sign posts do the job.
The report makes no recommendation about whether to proceed with the project and says funds would have to be identified to cover the unbudgeted expense.
The existing signs have 12 or more lines of type on a sign that is only 18 inches tall, which may raise questions about whether it is readable to someone parking at more than a few feet from the sign, rather than the roughly 300 foot length of a half block in Evanston.
The federal government’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices calls for using a 18×24 inch sign to alert drivers just to snow emergency parking restrictions.
An image of the 18×24 inch snow route sign from the federal manual.
The federal guidelines also call for using two signs a total of 24×18 inches in size when there are two parking messages to deliver — such as on the example below.
A combination of two 12×18 inch parking signs showing no parking in red on the left and restricted parking in green on the right — the colors specified for each purpose in the federal rules.