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Group Blasts Caltrans Plan for Highway Signs

An environmental group says a proposal by the California Department of Transportation to convert the state's 674 changeable digital road signs into commercial billboards is a bad idea. KPBS Environme

Group Blasts Caltrans Plan for Highway Signs

An environmental group says a proposal by the California Department of Transportation  to convert the state's 674 changeable digital road signs into commercial billboards is a bad idea. KPBS Environmental Reporter Ed Joyce has more.

Caltrans wants to use the signs for commercial advertising along with official safety messages.

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The agency says it's one way to raise money for the financially-strapped highway fund.

Kevin Fry is the President of Scenic America.

He says the California plan would create a safety hazard.

Fry: People's eyes are going to be taken off the road for much longer periods of time while they're looking at these commercial advertisements and that in itself is dangerous. Once the public starts to perceive these signs as just being another digital billboard they may stop looking at them. That will diminish their ability to pick up the official messages, the emergency messages that are on the sign.

He says the state-owned signs have never been used for commercial purposes in California or any other state.

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Fry says using the signs for commercial advertising would violate numerous federal and state laws.

Ed Joyce, KPBS News.