What I said in Atlanta

The public forum in Atlanta about the Highway Beautification Act had about 30 people in attendance. I was pleased to see a good number of people from garden clubs and beautification boards. The garden club ladies are very concerned about cutting trees in front of billboards, and the beautification folks say that billboards are a blight and make a place ugly. They're right, of course.

Thank you to all the Scenic Alabama people who submitted comments. I put them in a document on a CD and gave it along with email printouts to the consultants. I think we impressed them.

For your edification and delight, here are the comments I made. Feel free to use them yourselves if you need to explain to someone why you don't like billboards.

Who owns the roads? Do the citizens who pay for interstate highways through their tax dollars have a right to peaceful enjoyment of their property? Or are they destined to be assaulted by commercial advertising that they cannot escape?

In the more than 40 years since the HBA was adopted, things have changed. Billboards have changed – they are not the little signs nestled in the trees or popping up in a cow pasture. They are huge structures, as high as cell phone towers in some cases, looming over the road and filling up the view. Travelers have changed – they get their information from the internet, their auto club and travel magazines. They stop at welcome centers, they read maps. They plan their travel, and they depend on wayfinding signs such as logo signs and on-premise signs.

Billboard content has changed. Only about half the billboards on the interstates in Alabama are directional in nature – that is, they refer the viewer to a specific site. The rest are advertisements for chiropractors and Coke, for radio stations and churches, for Crown Royal and subdivisions. Even those billboards that are directional are not always travel oriented – many are for furniture stores, car dealerships and other non-tourist destinations. And, since you cannot regulate the content of a billboard, there is no way to insure that billboards on interstate highways actually give information to travelers.

When the HBA was adopted, Congress agreed that billboards should be controlled, in order to promote public safety and to preserve natural beauty. Its purpose has been chipped away in the ensuing years, until now the citizens who own the roads have no say in what they look like.

In every other area of our economic life, we can opt out of advertising. We can put down the newspaper and close the magazine. We can turn off the radio or TIVO the television. We can put spam filters on our email and pop-up blockers on our browsers. We can put our phone on a do-not-call list. But when we’re on the road, we’re stuck. And that’s not right.

In Alabama, the Highway Beautification Act does not work in regard to billboard control. We have many miles of federal-control highways and very few resources to administer and enforce the law.

One of the challenges is the HBA’s loophole regarding unzoned property. Only a few Alabama counties have zoning, and the “commercial or industrial use” clause is interpreted very liberally. We have billboard companies that establish paint shops or small offices in rural areas, then claim those as commercial uses and construct billboards. It appears that even power line right of way is interpreted as commercial use, leading to blighted areas with billboards stacked one upon the other.

It is also difficult to enforce our state’s requirements that the public’s trees not be cut for billboard visibility. It is far too easy for a company to ask forgiveness rather than permission. I am proud to say that ALDOT has just adopted a new policy regarding trees, at the request of hundreds of citizens. We expect that ALDOT will be paying more attention to preserving the public’s trees in the future.

The HBA’s allowing billboards in commercial or industrial areas is outdated. At the time, it was thought that those areas were already ugly, so a billboard wouldn’t make it any worse. Today, cities across the country are revitalizing their downtowns, and those commercial areas are as attractive as any mountain view. Billboards on interstates in urban areas such as Birmingham are not only unattractive – for example one in Birmingham blocks the view of historic Phillips High School – but also a dangerous distraction at the “malfunction junction” that so many cities have.

Scenic Alabama and its members and supporters would like to see no billboards permitted on federal highways, particularly the interstates and limited access highways. This would protect the rights of the public owners of the roads.

We realize that is an ambitious goal. In the interim, these are some proposals to strengthen the HBA and its enforcement.

• create an annual fee system to fund enforcement and administration, the proceeds of which would go to the state or other authority that administers the HBA.
• look at federal guidelines for logo signs, directional signs and TODS, to determine what ways those programs can be enhanced to give actual travel information
• allow local jurisdictions to “opt in” to billboards.In cities that have sign ordinances, this would not be needed, because they have already determined whether or not to permit them. We should not that most cities prohibit them or seriously restrict them. But in areas that do not have zoning, the local community, which after all is impacted by the billboard, should have the opportunity to say yes or no.
• tighten the guidelines for placement in unzoned areas, to create more specificity as to what is considered a commercial use.
• expand the distance requirement. 500 feet is much too close for the new monopole billboards. Jurisdictions that permit billboards generally require 1,500 to 2,000 feet between boards, and that includes across the street from each other.
• retain the requirement that nonconforming signs destroyed by weather or natural occurrences cannot be rebuilt. This protect communities that do not want billboards.
• create a federal enforcement mechanism for billboards that are illegally constructed or reconstructed.That is, a company that put up a board illegally would be subject to federal prosecution.
• do not permit digital display boards on interstates. They are a safety hazard.