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  • Winnipeg Please Standardize Street Signs

    January 25, 2011
    in Winnipeg

    Driving around with a friend (who recently moved back to the city) the other day when he brought up a good point, city street signs are completely random. It’s impossible to know where to look for a street sign and sometimes you can’t find one at all, even at major intersections.

    In cities like Winnipeg, where traffic signals are hung from horizontal poles, the most visible place to mount a street sign is directly on the mounting pole, right above the roadway. I think that’s pretty straightforward common-sense.

    I’ve pulled some images of Portage Avenue from Google Streetview. Portage is one of the busiest roads in Winnipeg, it’s the start of the Yellowhead Trail (west to Edmonton) and part of the main Trans Canada Highway (to Calgary). According to the City of Winnipeg’s 2009 Traffic Flow study (pdf), Portage Avenue received an average weekday flow of 75,000 cars per day – the portions of road mentioned below see about 75% of that. Suffice it to say, it’s a busy road.

    Portage & Moray

    An example of good signage; every major intersection should be set up like this. You can clearly see a large sign marking the cross street above every traffic signal on all four intersecitons.

    Portage & Sturgeon

    A few kilometers west of Moray lies one of the worst examples of street signage in the city. The westbound lane (on the left) is fine, it’d be hard to miss that Sturgeon Rd sign. For no apparent reason eastbound lane is completely non-standard. The traffic signal is clearly missing a sign, you’ll probably have to squint to actually find the sign. I’ll give you a hint, it’s off to the right…on a “no stopping” sign. How completely random is that? It gets worse, the sign post is actually offset a couple of meters ahead of the intersection. So, if you’re stopped at the stop line, or anywhere in one of the left-hand lanes it’s actually physically impossible to see the sign.

    Obviously inconsistant street signage is far from the biggest problem facing Winnipeg, it’s not even the worst problem with the roads. It’s just one of those little things…


  • Canadian Tech Roundup – Episode 10 – Rogers, Rogers and more

    January 25, 2011
    in Canadian Tech News, Podcasts
    • CRTC Says Rogers Not Complying With Net Neutrality Disclosure Requirements
    • Rogers increasing txt msging from 15 to 20 cents
    • Rogers’ Scare Tactics and “Unsafe Public Wifi”
    • Best technologies you can’t get in Canada
    • Who’s going to stand up for consumer rights when it comes to cell phone companies: A cell phone company?
    • Extra billing for internet use a ‘ripoff’: NDP
    • Fibre in Halifax
    • Bell/CTV concerns – Vertical integration is great for companies, but what about consumers?

    [podcast]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/480185/podcasts/CTREP10.mp3[/podcast]

    iTunes Link

    RSS


  • Monday Morning Links

    January 24, 2011
    in Links
    • Internet Movie Car Database – A forum that seeks to identify  and catalogue every vehicle used in every movie. It’s quite incredible. They’ve even identified dprototypes used in movies set in the future (Demolition Man, Back To The Future II) and animated cars (Cars). Each make and model is cross-referenced, it’s really a very well designed database.
    • Reasons Craig Ferguson is the most under-rated late night host.
    • Brand New: Opinions On Corporate and Brand Identity Work – Great blog about logos and branding. If you don’t read it yet, you should. Also check out the B-sides.

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Hi.

Hello, my name is Ryan! I’m a web developer in Winnipeg, Canada. I’ve been documenting my random thoughts and occasional bits of interesting code here since 2005. Twitter. Github. Instagram. Mastodon.

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