America's most visible public space, the highway, ruined by traffic control devices

It is bad enough that most of our public spaces are perceived mostly through the frame of the windshield. And now that our attention is too often on the virtual landscapes of the GPS or, even worse, we are fully distracted by text messages, e-mail and gadgets of all kinds, highway engineers must have concluded that aesthetics don't matter at all any more. Not that public space aesthetics were often a top priority.  Thus, already in 1927 H.L. Mencken in his grim humor mused about the "libido of the ugly" suspecting "a love of the ugly for its own sake".
Indeed, campaigns such as Ladybird Johnson's Highway Beautification Act of 1965 can only be understood in the context of the institutional neglect of the public roam or worse, its continual assault on it. So here we find ourselves, many decades later still bemoaning the same things that bothered already Mencken when he traveled from Baltimore to Pittsburgh (although, truth be told, he traveled by train).

And that is why today there is a great deal of real joy within me, and within my family, as we meet here in this historic East Room to sign the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Now, this bill does more than control advertising and junkyards along the billions of dollars of highways that the people have built with their money--public money, not private money. It does more than give us the tools just to landscape some of those highways. This bill will bring the wonders of nature back into our daily lives. This bill will enrich our spirits and restore a small measure of our national greatness. Lyndon B Johnson, 1965

The quality and care of the American public space (or the lack thereof) is such a wide field that we want to narrow it down to one particular thing for the purpose of this blog: The way how utilities, street lights, signals and other electric equipment impose themselves and are seemingly in an arms race towards bigness and ugliness.
In a quest to create the strongest, most mass producible, cheapest to erect pole that can carry the largest possible number of signal-heads,  camera detectors, signs and streetlights safely through any kind of weather, the engineers came up with poles as fat as bridge pylons crudely bolted to baseplates floating above concrete footings. Inelegantly bolted to the sides of those pylons are cantilevers reaching in a ridiculously disproportionate way across all lanes of those huge intersections.

While bridge and building engineers traditionally tried to work "tectonically" i.e. design structures which follow elegantly the forces into the ground, these pylon-mast-arm beasts are designed on the concept of brute force and probably cost alone. Nationwide, these abominations are replacing the older more elegant pole and span-wire constructions that had a bit of the feel of third world when the signal heads were dangling in the wind, but did their job with a lot less steel.

Even inside cities, in real streets with sidewalks and buildings all around, the monster poles are replacing the historic poles which had brackets and often combined trolley wires,  street lights and signals. And while the highway departments are at it, they also add all kinds of boxes on or near the ground that house electric meters, transformers, conduit ends and whatever else is apparently needed these days to run a set of traffic control devices. These stainless steel boxes are not only less elegant than typical refrigerators, they often block the path and views for pedestrians.

It seems that in the past the two unholy partners of street uglification, the highway engineers and the utility engineers, had some level of collaboration. Thus, many times street lights were mounted on signal poles and signal poles were, in fact, also utility poles. Not any more. Now the signal poles spring up right next to the overloaded utility poles which are leaning already any which way under the cables, telephone wires and high voltage lines strung carelessly along our arteries and alleys.
The below photos speak for themselves.

It is time that we get out of our cars and walk our streets to see what has been done to them. Let's wake up and request design competitions for traffic control devices and maybe create some rules for the utilities as well. Let's revive President Johnson's thoughts about a quality public realm and prove Mencken wrong. We have  long way to go, though.

For a good example of how to design decent public spaces, we don't have to go no further than Washington DC, our capital. There we not only see beautiful plazas, parks and avenues but also attention to detail when it comes to utilities, power lines and signal devices.
Imagine, back when DC had streetcars, it didn't even allow them to have the overhead wires! (This discussion was recently revived when streetcars came back to DC on H Street). For traffic signals no mast-arms and no dangling heads are allowed. All signals sit on decorative posts at the corners of intersections and they have a nice historic color instead of flaming yellow.

The first four photos are all from one extra hideous intersection, but they could be pretty much anywhere in the US

Signal poles with huge cantilever arms require huge pylons, footings and connection bolts, often sitting in sidewalks creating tripping hazards. Plus there are meters and control boxes which block pathways and views for pedestrians.

Utility companies offer their poles to telephone companies and to cable companies until they are so loaded that any major storm could knock them over. This picture shows the next generation signal installation. No more span-wires, instead gigantic galvanized steel poles and mast-arms. Yet the utility poles will remain and so there is just additional clutter .

Notice the various street light types (cobra-head and box fixture, one uglier than the other). The ubiquitous cell phone tower makes an appropriate background. The old spanwire and the new mast arm mounted signals (still covered up) are seen together here.

That signals and lights can also be held up by much smaller poles is proven by this example in Manhattan. This is not a historic intersection although the equipment is modeled after historic precedents. This is new newly re-designed area of the Hudson Expressway where it comes down at grade near Battery Park.

Pioneer Square, Portland, historic traffic signal.  (Net image)

Four sided compact signals were hanging from wires over the center of Baltimore intersections before streets became one way streets. Some signals are still in place likes this one.

Washington DC, typical signal on fluted pole with grey or dark green colors instead of bright yellow. The District of Columbia does not allow the span-wires and mast arms and should be a model across the nation. (Net image)

Useful Links:
Project Public Spaces
The American Public Space
Learning From Las Vegas
The Geography of Nowhere
The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices