Travel the streets of West Valley City and you may notice that the city has a mixed identity when it comes to street name signs. 

For years since West Valley City was incorporated in 1980, green signs with white lettering stood tall on corners to tell drivers and pedestrians where they were. Then about a decade ago, black signs with white characters and the city’s “Unity, Pride, Progress” logo began popping up. But they did not entirely replace the green signs, many of which still stand today. Often the black signs replaced their green predecessors that were damaged or whose readability and reflectivity had succumbed to time and weather over the years.  

A few intersections around the city have lately sported slightly larger and bolder white signs with black lettering and the city logo. 

It’s expected that once the new design is approved by the city council—which is expected—the new black-on-white signs will replace all previous signs numbering several thousand at a cost West Valley City manager Wayne Pyle estimates at about $750,000. The new signs will be made by a third-party company. “The only question becomes how fast will (the new signs) get deployed in replacing the whole city,” he added.

The look and size of street name signs are not entirely up to the creative liberties of cities and towns. The federal government has a big say in their appearance by way of the Department of Transportation’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (11th edition in case you’re wondering). It regulates the look, visibility, dimensions, placement and other engineering standards of a slew of different types of signs that help motorists navigate America’s streets, roads, and highways. The black background signs in West Valley City, however, do not meet some of those standards, including their visibility at night. “The new black lettering on the white background is compliant,” Pyle said. 

“It’s not any kind of a ‘we have to do it right now’ sort of thing,” Pyle concluded. “It just would make the city look a whole lot better if it was uniform.” λ