New signs lighting the way on suburban streets

If certain street signs in Lake County have seemed bigger and brighter lately, it's not an illusion.

The county's transportation division is adding high-tech, internally illuminated street signs to many of the roadways it oversees. They're designed to make travel easier - and safer - for motorists, especially at night.

Equipped with fluorescent bulbs or extra-bright light emitting diodes, known as LEDs, the signs can make street names more readable from much greater distances, experts say. That gives motorists looking for a particular street more time to prepare for a turn.

"They can see that thing hundreds of feet in advance," said John Lachmann, who leads the traffic signal committee for an industry group called the International Municipal Signal Association. "It provides a much safer approach to an intersection."

Although they can be found across the country and overseas, the illuminated signs are particularly popular in Florida, Arizona and other southern communities with large senior-citizen populations.

And since Americans everywhere are living longer - and therefore driving longer - transportation experts expect the high-tech signs will pop up more in the years to come.

"These are certainly a great step forward as we as a nation are preparing for an older motorist population," said Doug Hecox, a Federal Highway Administration spokesman. "They make sense."

Initially utilizing only fluorescent bulbs, internally illuminated street signs first appeared in the 1980s.

They were predominantly used in the South and Southwest for many years, however, because fluorescent bulbs don't perform well in northern winters, said Tony Khawaja, Lake County's traffic engineer.

The development of signs using LED bulbs, which aren't as sensitive to cold weather, led to their growing use in this area, Khawaja said.

Made by multiple manufacturers, the signs generally range from 4 to 10 feet in length and can be between 1 and 2 feet tall. They're typically hung over traffic on horizontal bars at intersections with electric signals and available power sources.

The first illuminated signs appeared in Lake County six or seven years ago, Khawaja said. Today, 98 are operating at 28 county-maintained intersections in Antioch, Buffalo Grove, Gurnee, Libertyville, Long Grove, Volo and other towns.

It's now county policy to install an illuminated sign anytime a street sign is needed at a signalized intersection.

Several of the fancy signs are on Aptakisic Road in Lincolnshire. Village officials there are appreciative of the county's proactive efforts.

"There's nothing better than those backlit signs," Lincolnshire Public Works Director Frank Tripicchio said. "They really jump out at you."

Mesa - home to the Chicago Cubs' spring training operation - is one of many Arizona towns using illuminated street signs. Starting in 1991, they were installed to eliminate the need for advance road signs that are placed ahead of intersections to warn people about the crossings ahead, said Renate Ehm, the city's senior transportation engineer.

"In Mesa we don't have a lot of medians and we have a lot of wide roads, so you could only install (advance signs) on the right side," Ehm said. "But you put (the lighted signs) overhead, and all lanes can see it."

Mesa now has about 400 illuminated street signs - all with fluorescent bulbs - at 30 percent of its signalized intersections, Ehm said.

"The chances of people getting lost or making erratic movements because (they) missed their turns are less," she said. "I love them."

So does the Federal Highway Administration. Its 2003 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices - a guidebook that aims to keep signs, lane markings and other road elements consistent nationwide - recommends illuminated street signs be used on all streets with overhead sign posts.

"They work," the administration's Hecox said. "Are they the only way? Certainly not. Are they the best way? The jury's still out. But they're certainly an effective way. And they're just one more tool in (a highway department's) tool kit."

Internally illuminated signs have some drawbacks, however. Primarily, they're dramatically more expensive than regular signs, requiring more of an expenditure to purchase and operate.

A single illuminated sign can cost more than $2,000, according to industry estimates. In contrast, the price of a traditional flat sign typically is a few hundred bucks.

They also use about $70 a year worth of electricity, whereas non-lighted signs need none.

Illuminated street signs require more maintenance than the regular versions, too. The bulbs can break, burn out or loosen, and it takes money and manpower to fix them.

With transportation departments across the country feeling budget crunches now because of rising gasoline and asphalt prices and other factors, many may not be able to afford the high-tech signs, Hecox said.

Technological improvements are reducing the long-term costs of lighted signs, however.

LED lights have a life span of 50,000 hours, far longer than fluorescent bulbs, according to a 2005 report in the IMSA Journal. They also can go at least 10 times as long without maintenance, the article said.

LED signs use less electricity than fluorescent signs, too. A six-foot-long LED sign can require as little as 15 watts of power - less than the bulb in a typical household lamp - while a similar fluorescent sign would need 192 watts to run, the IMSA Journal article said.

Some signs even come equipped with solar panels and don't drain off any power from the neighborhood grid.

"It's just an incredible energy savings," Hecox said.

Cost concerns aside, Hecox is sure of illuminated signs' effectiveness. Although every motorist benefits from seeing road signs more clearly, he sees the devices as a particular benefit to older drivers who often have slower response times and slipping vision.

And by making their car trips safer, Hecox said, everyone on the road is better off.

"Keeping traffic moving in a uniform and consistent manner is a way to improve road safety overall," he said. "These are not novelty items. They are real safety devices."