As you drive around the District, it becomes clear that no one is paying attention to the placement or maintenance of traffic signs and signals with any diligence.
One observer has timed the traffic light at Clifford and Chestnut remaining red for nearly 5 minutes for Chestnut St. motorists on many occasions. The situation gets reported to the Traffic Department, they push a button or throw a lever and for a few days the light behaves... until it doesn't.
One-way streets are haphazardly marked at intersections. The situation is not helped by building that edge narrow sidewalks and create blind intersections. Taken together with the Rhode Island habit of running yellow and — not infrequently — red lights, there's rich potential for disaster.
The JDA has begun an informal inventory of missing, damaged, misplaced and otherwise confusing street signs. The results were posted on 15 May 2017.
UPDATE 13 June 17: The traffic department has been at work and some situations have been corrected: 1. They've put up a Do Not Enter sign at Richmond and Clifford. 2. They replaced the damaged sign on Chestnut St. near Nick-n-Nee's. 3. They picked up the abandoned stop sign at the end of Parsonage St.
MISSING SIGNS
DAMAGED SIGNS
UNREADABLE, CONFUSING & OBSCURED SIGNS
