Lost In The Wayfinding Wilderness
If there’s a bigger waste of money than Charlotte’s spiffy, new Wayfinding system and accompanying signs, I’m hard pressed to find it. And that’s saying something, considering the city’s billion-dollar-plus budget that’s stuffed with more pork than a pig farmer’s breakfast platter.
In fact, about the only positive thing to be said of the city’s spiffy, new signs is that they’re spiffy and new. Which I guess counts for much in a city that prides itself on image over substance.
The so-called “urban wayfinding system” consists of a bunch of flashy electronic signs and static painted ones that inform drivers and pedestrians how to get around uptown and where to find parking garages. The model of governmental bureaucracy, it’s been in the works for about a half-decade and is slated for completion later this summer. Total price: $4.1 million. For signs. That flash. Or don’t.
The first wayfinding wave rolled out recently along Interstates 77 and 277, and Independence Boulevard, leading into uptown. The new signs use color-coded blocks to direct motorists to different quadrants of Center City: north, south, east, west, because without the signs, obviously, anybody without half a wit wouldn’t know which direction was, well, north, south, east or west.
The new directional signs replace sets of older ones that referred to the different uptown, downtown, Center City quadrants as first, second, third and fourth wards, which will still be called, presumably, first, second, third and fourth wards, but will be pointed to as north, south, east and west.
The second wayfinding wave will include on-street signs uptown that direct pedestrians to major attractions like the coming-soon NASCAR Hall of Fame, the new Wachovia Wells Fargo Cultural Campus, and, um, the coming-soon NASCAR Hall of Fame and the new Wachovia Wells Fargo Cultural Campus.
I’m certain that before spending more than $4 million in the middle of a recession for signs that direct pedestrians to a smattering of uptown attractions, the city did an exhaustive study that showed the pricey signs will be much more effective at guiding folks around uptown than having them simply stop and ask for directions. How completely un-world-class would that be.
In addition to directing pedestrians to the scores of non-existent uptown attractions, the signs will also direct motorists to what will soon be the scores of non-existent street-level parking spaces and garages that urban planners are working feverishly to eliminate, forcing everybody out of their cars and onto the city’s light rail express.
Surely, that’s worth at least $4.1 million.
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