Finally, A Parking Sign That's Easy To Read

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Last year, New York City finally started installing new parking signs designed to be less confusing and cheaper to produce than the old ones.

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There's still room for improvement.

Nikki Sylianteng is an interaction designer who took it upon herself to find a better way to convey the simple information: When can you park your car? How long can you stay? She settled on a "timechart-based" system, explaining on her website:

My strategy was to visualize the blocks of time when parking is allowed and not allowed. I kept everything else the same - the colors and the form factor - as my intention with this redesign is to show how big a difference a thoughtful, though conservative and low budget, approach can make in terms of time and stress saved for the driver.

Here's the final product:

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It's easy to use: Just check the day and time, and see if parking is allowed, and for how long. We'd suggest breaking up the Monday-Friday block, since on many streets, parking isn't allowed on Tuesday and Friday mornings, for example. But that wouldn't be a major change.

To get some feedback, Sylianteng tested them "guerrilla-style," putting them up with room for feedback. The response she posted online is quite good:

Now we have to see if Polly Trottenberg, Mayor Bill de Blasio's choice to run the City's Department of Transportation, wants to make the change.

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If you're interested in participating in Sylianteng's project or hearing more, you can sign up here.

For reference, here are the signs that NYC unveiled last year (compared to the old signs):

new nyc parking signs

NYC DOT