{"id":10852,"date":"2010-05-04T15:23:35","date_gmt":"2010-05-04T19:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=10852"},"modified":"2013-01-21T13:00:16","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:00:16","slug":"the-turtle-sign-should-die-a-slow-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/05\/04\/the-turtle-sign-should-die-a-slow-death\/","title":{"rendered":"The turtle sign should die a slow death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3327\/4579140112_092dedc35e_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I am fascinated by signs on our streets. This fascination, though, often leads me to frustration in Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>A case in point is the use of the sign Please Drive Slowly accompanied by an image of a turtle; it may be the most ridiculous piece of metal in use by the City&#8217;s transportation department. It is often found around schools or in sleepy neighbourhoods where kids can be found playing near the street or where there is a hospital or retirement home. The example shown above \u2014 found at College and St. George on the edge of the University of Toronto&#8217;s downtown campus \u2014 is a glaring example of Toronto&#8217;s unflinching obsession with rules and signage (not to mention signage clutter, as seen by a second group of signs tucked in behind the turtle).<\/p>\n<p>The speed here drops to 30km\/hr, which makes sense with all the pedestrian traffic flowing in and out of buildings of the St. George campus. But is this the best way to indicate to a driver that they should slow down? I&#8217;d say no. Can a single and much better designed sign do the trick instead of three? That would be an emphatic yes.<\/p>\n<p>The turtle sign, no matter how charming or cute, really has no place on our roads. A driver does not have time to examine the detailed image of the turtle to figure out what it is (if the sign-makers *really* needed to use a turtle a pictograph or silhouette would be more ideal). In a multicultural city like Toronto <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cultural_depictions_of_turtles_and_tortoises\">does a turtle represent slowness<\/a> to most people? And with a warning sign that clearly states TRAFFIC CALMING ZONE, isn&#8217;t the turtle image just redundant? And what about the typography? An italicized version of <a href=\"http:\/\/new.myfonts.com\/fonts\/urw\/cooper\/\">the font Cooper<\/a> \u2014  or some knock-off version \u2014 can only be described as a very poor choice.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Obviously, signage is needed in this area because the climate for drivers changes once you enter the roads of U of T. But what type of signs could be used?<\/p>\n<p>Below are two examples of signs I stumbled across while on vacation in Gothenburg, Sweden last year. They are placed low and near the curb in a much different place than speed limits. Also notice how they treat the colour of the sign; In Toronto, we use a <a href=\"http:\/\/highwaytrafficsupply.com\/images\/regulatory_signs.html\/W11-2a.JPG\">gold and black, diamond-shaped warning sign<\/a> for pedestrians, while in Europe they use the blue background. In the world of street signs, blue is symbolic of a positive action, the opposite of a warning, kind of like how Toronto bike lanes are demarcated.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2715\/4516641413_163bbe6729_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"902\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2702\/4517275664_ceb354ce8b_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"902\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2723\/4517316538_c241abf385_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"599\" height=\"398\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The above sign is the standard used for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shared_space\">shared streets<\/a> in Europe (this photo was taken in Malmo, Sweden). While St. George Street is not a shared street (though there are plans to pedestrianize parts of it), a modified sign of this nature, indicating the large presence of pedestrians, could be a practical alternative to Toronto&#8217;s practice of inconsistent and cluttered signage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am fascinated by signs on our streets. This fascination, though, often leads me to frustration in Toronto. A case in point is the use of the sign Please Drive Slowly accompanied by an image of a turtle; it may be the most ridiculous piece of metal in use by the City&#8217;s transportation department. It<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/05\/04\/the-turtle-sign-should-die-a-slow-death\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;The turtle sign should die a slow death&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21758,21759,32,9],"tags":[28,427,1128,3289,1803,8930,1295,19,4295,270],"class_list":["post-10852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-features","category-streetscape","category-traffic","tag-behaviour","tag-driver","tag-europe","tag-malmo","tag-metal","tag-st-george-campus","tag-sweden","tag-toronto","tag-transportation-department","tag-university-of-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The turtle sign should die a slow death - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/05\/04\/the-turtle-sign-should-die-a-slow-death\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The turtle sign should die a slow death - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am fascinated by signs on our streets. 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