Controversy bright lights Billboards a concern

April 24, 2007 12:35 am

Electronic billboards, like this one along U.S. 1 in Falmouth, are being criticized by some for being unsightly and distracting to motorists. Click for larger photo and to order reprints

by Hugh Muir

Some 500 dazzling new-era advertising signs have lit up across the nation in the past few years; three of them are prominently on display in Stafford County.
One result of their presence has been growing public concern over safety.
The Stafford Planning Commission will hold a public hearing May 16 to discuss those billboards. The debate focuses mainly on whether the signs pose a safety threat to drivers by distracting their attention. Meanwhile, preservationists and historians call the bright lights a blight on the landscape.
County officials fear that the signs can be similar to television screens or computer monitors where images change periodically.
Each high-tech billboard, approximately 8 feet by 20 feet, sits atop a pole that is two stories tall. It is made up of thousands of light-emitting diodes similar to the bright bulbs in the taillights of new vehicles.
The signs alternate some half dozen static ads every eight seconds. The law forbids changes more often than every six seconds, which would be seen as a distraction.
The three electronic billboards in Stafford are on U.S. 1 just north of the intersection with U.S. 17, on U.S. 17 west of the University of Mary Washington School of Graduate and Professional Studies and on Garrisonville Road west of Interstate 95. They were installed within the past year.
Their appearance has triggered the Planning Commission to review the county's regulation of billboards in general and of electronic signs in particular.
Meeting to discuss the issue last Wednesday, the members accepted an ordinance that tightly defined how billboards function, how they are maintained and where they can be placed. It also reaffirmed county ordinances passed in 1994 that forbid new billboards of any kind.
"The good news," Deputy County Attorney Stephen G. Judy told the commission, "is we can prevent any more of these billboards." This can be done, he said, through the existing classification of "nonconforming billboards."
Judy pointed out that any billboard lawfully erected before Aug. 9, 1994, that is larger than 50 square feet (standard billboards are triple that size) is a non-conforming billboard. Therefore no billboard within the county should be allowed to be converted into an electronic billboard since the cost far exceeds the "replacement cost, new" of existing nonconforming signs.
The present electronic billboards have been adaptations of existing poster-style billboard structures. One of the questions raised by county planners is how the conversion of older billboards into LED signs fits within the legal financial restrictions on the cost of maintaining and repairing large road signs. Present law states that the cost of renovating a billboard can be no more than 50 percent of the cost of erecting a brand-new sign.
"The cost of an LED sign can be $500,000," Judy pointed out, which is far more than the total cost of an entire traditional billboard.
Judy reported that the county may be precluded from doing anything about the three existing LED boards. The Code of Virginia states that the county must appeal to the Virginia Department of Transportation commissioner's office within 30 days to block a billboard application deemed objectionable.
"Our failure to raise the issue within 30 days precludes any further challenge," his statement said. But, he added, "our existing ordinances will prevent any further electronic billboard signs [of more than 50 square feet] from cropping up."
Lamar Advertising Co. owns the LED billboards in Stafford County.
"We have no evidence of there being any distraction to drivers" by the new signs, the company's attorney Chip Dicks said in an interview.
Dicks, who also represents the Outdoor Advertising Association of Virginia, helped draft the the 1999 Virginia legislation permitting the LED signs. That law restricts any motion, pulsating pictures or intermittent lights. "No flash, no blink, no move," Dicks said.
Cessie Howell of the Historic Port of Falmouth Association expressed concern in an interview that "this electronic technology may spread." The LED billboard on U.S. 1 just north of U.S. 17 is within the Falmouth Historic District. So is a large standard billboard nearby at the northern approach to the Falmouth Bridge over the Rappahannock River.
Howell wants them all taken down.

Source: The Free Lance Star, Fredricksburg, VA.