A familiar road sign feature will be a thing of the past in the coming years.
The green and white population signs welcoming motorists to the state’s cities and counties will be phasing out when they reach the end of their service life by the Missouri Department of Transportation..
In terms of Perryville, it mentions that the information on the three school districts within the city limits: Perryville, St. Vincent and Immanuel Lutheran.
“When our term is up on the existing signs, we will not be able to replace them,” Perryville Administrator Brent Buerck said. “That goes along with the population signs. They aren’t going to allow communities to do those anymore.”
MoDOT had several reasons behind this change including the fact that the population signs are not critical to the safety of drivers on the road, such as other directional signage and the speed limit signs.
Missouri is one of the few states left to still feature population on a city or county limit sign.
MoDOT also noted that the population changes more frequently than the sign is changed and they wish money to be used more efficiently.
This is also a crackdown on the problem of distracted driving, which is the leading causes of traffic fatalities. Missouri is one of only two U.S. states without a universal restriction on distracted driving, meaning texting.
The next revision of a federal document guiding state transportation systems, “Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices”, is expected to state the following: “Names of elected officials or promotional messages, such as notable accomplishment or claims, shall not be displayed on a jurisdictional boundary sign,” adding MoDOT has already stopped putting tribute information on its signage. Currently Perryville’s sign commemorates the 2014 state championship of the Pirates boys soccer team, along with accomplishments for St. Vincent and Immanuel Lutheran.
“We liked having the signs there, so we asked for them,” Buerck said. “MoDOT’s job is traffic safety and traffic flow. If they feel the best way to do that is to limit those signs than that is fine.”
