Wednesday 8 April 2015

Sign Make It Better

I do occasionally tag traffic sign-related tweets as #signmakebetter and as we approach election season, it does make me smile that politicians seem to love them so much, despite pushing us to declutter our streets.

Yes, I have covered clutter before and I am not going to repeat myself, this is about the elections. In London, we are "only" voting for our MPs and actually, it has been a lot quieter than usual on the correspondence front and so I am hopeful that the current and potential MPs in my area had more important issues to campaign on than getting new signs put in!

Transport never features highly in elections at any level, unless it is a shiny big-ticket scheme like HS2 which will often divide opinion and so the stuff that gets people about on a daily basis is all but forgotten. This is sad, because it is the funding decisions, the national and local policies and indeed the views of elected people which make or break the small interventions which can often make all the difference or at least set the foundations for greater and more equitable things. Our transport policies have direct impacts on health, poverty, access to employment, pollution, personal safety; the list goes on - but then you all knew this anyway! 

No, as we move to the elections I will be voting for those who know that there are signs which can make things better such as those bearing the number "20", pictures of little green men and little green bicycles, the words "except cycles" and "bus stop", the "no through road sign" and lots and lots of little blue signs showing people safe and direct routes for walking and cycling where motorised traffic plays second fiddle.

1 comment:

  1. you obviously haven't yet seen this cr@p that UKIP are pushing through the letterboxes in Newcastle...

    http://i.imgur.com/ejjlFWy.jpg

    ReplyDelete