Friday, July 22, 2011

The Infrastructure Chronicles -- Volume 10

Missing directional street signs is a pervasive and long-lasting problem in Eastern Massachusetts. This article in the Boston Globe, "Looking for direction to Storrow Drive," reported the action of a citizen in pointing this out.

Reader Charles Barr of Waltham said he has been itching to ask city transportation officials why there are no signs to assist drivers trying to find the entrance to Storrow Drive at the corner of Berkeley and Beacon streets in Back Bay.

“I can’t remember the number of times in decades that I drove past this spot, missing the huge sign which has always been obscured by foliage, until I finally memorized that Berkeley is the street where I must turn right in order to access Storrow westbound,” Barr writes in an e-mail, making it a point to note that he is a longtime native.

This is a jurisdictionally tricky one, as the streets are owned by the City of Boston, but Storrow Drive is owned by the state.

[A]fter hearing from GlobeWatch, the [state] department sent engineers to check on the signs last week, and they discovered they are no longer there. Port said it is unclear how long they have been missing. New signs are now “in the queue” to be replaced, she said, although she could not provide an estimate of how long it will take to install them.

A friend offers this comment:

Who are they kidding? Half the street signs in the city are obscured by trees. Cambridge, too.

Kinda like hospitals - just fix the one problem somebody complains about and don't look any further.

2 comments:

A Tucson Web Developer said...

This is where a GPS system might come in handy..

Anonymous said...

I think Boston/Cambridge with tunnels and bridges might even confuse a GPS.....as an out of town driver there last year I found the traffic not as bad as advertised (I live in a bigger metro area), but the signage seriously stinks.