Your Tax Dollars at Work (Sort Of)

Charlotte's DOT is changing street signs ... for better or for worse

For at least twenty years, the street sign at the end of your block has been yelling at you in the all-caps format usually reserved for the comments section of a blog. Now, Charlotte’s Department of Transportation is trying its hand at a little tenderness. At $50 a sign—CDOT doesn’t even know how many signs are in the city, so the cost to you, dear taxpayer, is a mystery—its new green street markers are reflective to the point of being pixie dust sparkly, and the upper case–lower case text makes Tyvola Road easier to read than TYVOLA ROAD. CDOT says the old and the young like the signs, and if you don’t, too bad: you’ll see them going up across Charlotte gradually during the next three years.