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Hawaii also has a billboard ban. It was really jarring moving back to Illinois after getting used to not having them. It seems pretty clear that the negative im

Hawaii also has a billboard ban. It was really jarring moving back to Illinois after getting used to not having them. It seems pretty clear that the negative impact of billboards far outweigh the benefits so I'm always hoping more places outlaw them.

bruce511 2y ago
Yes travelling can really create a sense of what you have, or lack. Where I live there are very few billboards. I rarely see them. When I travel (especially to the US) it's very jarring. They are very visually polluting.
hollerith 2y ago
There is a ban on billboards in Marin County (on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco). Legally speaking, billboards are only banned within 500 yards or some other distance from the highway with the most traffic (where billboards would be most valuable, namely, US 101) but actually there are no billboards anywhere in the county and this has been the case since the 1960s (according to an old newspaper article). My guess is that the community has some way to exert "informal" (not based on formal governmental processes) pressure on landlords. Real estate prices are very high here in part because it is a very attractive landscape with plenty of hills and greenery and bodies of water, so maybe most landlords perceive that billboards have the potential to depress prices and keep the occasional landlord who contemplates erecting billboards in line somehow. Also as an exception to the general rule, bus shelters (structures owned and maintained by the city or the county to keep the rain and the sun off people waiting for a bus) near US 101 have ads on them (4' by 6' or so) and the buses themselves do, too, or at least they used to--it's been a few years since I noticed.
- b112 2y ago
  Real estate prices are very high here in part because it is a very scenic place with a lot of hills and trees and such I have a hard time accepting the "in part" even, and sort of align with "the only reason it's expensive is because of the closeness to SV". But yes it is very nice. And yes billboards would make it less nice.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    Marin County to SV is a really nasty commute, but I concede if it weren't close to downtown SF it would cost a lot less to live in Marin County. Large numbers of high paying jobs are necessary for high housing prices except in tax havens like Monaco.
    - b112 2y ago
      When I was a kid, I lived on lake which was connected to Lake Ontario. One summer a job was across the our small lake, a 40 minute drive by car, but maybe 10 minutes by boat as the crow flies. Sure, I got wet during rain and wavy days, but clothes get dry, and it sure was convenient. I often wondered, if the job was in SF itself, do people take boats to get to work? If so, why not? I presume docking costs? The place I worked had their own dock, so ... "sure, just tie up over there every day".
      - hollerith 2y ago
        Ferries are a popular way to commute from Marin Country to SF: https://www.goldengate.org/ferry/schedules-maps/ https://www.goldengate.org/ferry/schedules-maps/ https://www.blueandgoldfleet.com/sausalito/ https://www.blueandgoldfleet.com/sausalito/ I don't know of anyone using or having used a private boat to make the commute.
        dalke 2y ago
        When I was a kid in Miami, I read about people commuting to work by jet ski. This was before they replaced the Rickenbacker Causeway drawbridge with the William Powell Bridge, and the commute from Key Biscayne into Miami could be delayed and backed up, as boats had the right-of-way.
        ljf 2y ago
        I had a friend who lived in New Jersey in a water front property - he used to ride a jetski over to New York to stop for a drink at a bar in a marina. The issue was you had to pay marina fees to be allowed to dock there, so while it was fun it was actually a pretty pricey way to get to NY (and you'd be wearing damp clothes) - but he still thought it was a lot of fun. He was OK but apparently the was a lot of boat theft in that area too.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Marin's billboard ban is older than I'd thought, having been adopted in 1936 according to this article: <https://marinmagazine.com/community/history/history-of-a-highway/ https://marinmagazine.com/community/history/history-of-a-hig...> At least one billboard, along 101 at the highway cut between San Rafael and Larkspur, survived until the late 1970s or early 1980s, but was burned down in what has been described as the closest an act of arson has come to earning an award of commendation by the Marin County Board of Supervisors. More recently, a "flower billboard" was created, and in 2010 removed, along US-101 in Novato: <https://www.marinij.com/2010/08/24/controversial-flower-billboard-along-101-in-novato-is-taken-down/ https://www.marinij.com/2010/08/24/controversial-flower-bill...> (That article also places the county-wide ban more recently, in the 1970s.)
lostlogin 2y ago
The worst are the super bright lcd/led screen billboards. They are incredibly obnoxious. I’m surprised if they don’t case car crashes.
- Mo3 2y ago
  I'm sure they do
- cchi_co 2y ago
  [dead]
- devilbunny 2y ago
  Right up there with LED cop lights. Fucking blinding. I got stopped at a roadblock even before LED's, the highway patrol officer said "I wasn't sure you were going to stop, you nearly ran over [X] over there" and my reply was, "Your lights are so bright, and blue, and right here on the road, that I can't see a thing. I'm glad I didn't."
usrusr 2y ago
The benefits of billboards are a zero sum game, it's absurdly easy for the benefits of a ban to outweigh them. Here in Germany regulation of outside ads has zero novelty value, it's so much a given that I don't know anything about the history of it. And it turns out the benefits of a ban are much bigger than just more pleasant views, because the ad spend does not simply disappear. Much of it gets channeled into event sponsoring, sports clubs and the like, in short things that actually improve life for all instead of just providing some more passive income for property owners. It's a total no-brainer if there ever was one.
- account42 2y ago
  Still plenty of outside ads in Germany. The regulation needs to be stronger.
mynameisash 2y ago
This pretty much mirrors my experience: I live in Washington, and when I drive down the freeway, I see nothing but trees and mountains. When I go back to Minnesota to visit family, I'm bombarded with billboards -- often political or religious content. I don't miss that at all.

bruce511 2y ago

Yes travelling can really create a sense of what you have, or lack. Where I live there are very few billboards. I rarely see them. When I travel (especially to the US) it's very jarring. They are very visually polluting.

hollerith 2y ago

There is a ban on billboards in Marin County (on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco). Legally speaking, billboards are only banned within 500 yards or some other distance from the highway with the most traffic (where billboards would be most valuable, namely, US 101) but actually there are no billboards anywhere in the county and this has been the case since the 1960s (according to an old newspaper article). My guess is that the community has some way to exert "informal" (not based on formal governmental processes) pressure on landlords. Real estate prices are very high here in part because it is a very attractive landscape with plenty of hills and greenery and bodies of water, so maybe most landlords perceive that billboards have the potential to depress prices and keep the occasional landlord who contemplates erecting billboards in line somehow. Also as an exception to the general rule, bus shelters (structures owned and maintained by the city or the county to keep the rain and the sun off people waiting for a bus) near US 101 have ads on them (4' by 6' or so) and the buses themselves do, too, or at least they used to--it's been a few years since I noticed.

b112 2y ago
Real estate prices are very high here in part because it is a very scenic place with a lot of hills and trees and such I have a hard time accepting the "in part" even, and sort of align with "the only reason it's expensive is because of the closeness to SV". But yes it is very nice. And yes billboards would make it less nice.
- hollerith 2y ago
  Marin County to SV is a really nasty commute, but I concede if it weren't close to downtown SF it would cost a lot less to live in Marin County. Large numbers of high paying jobs are necessary for high housing prices except in tax havens like Monaco.
  - b112 2y ago
    When I was a kid, I lived on lake which was connected to Lake Ontario. One summer a job was across the our small lake, a 40 minute drive by car, but maybe 10 minutes by boat as the crow flies. Sure, I got wet during rain and wavy days, but clothes get dry, and it sure was convenient. I often wondered, if the job was in SF itself, do people take boats to get to work? If so, why not? I presume docking costs? The place I worked had their own dock, so ... "sure, just tie up over there every day".
    - hollerith 2y ago
      Ferries are a popular way to commute from Marin Country to SF: https://www.goldengate.org/ferry/schedules-maps/ https://www.goldengate.org/ferry/schedules-maps/ https://www.blueandgoldfleet.com/sausalito/ https://www.blueandgoldfleet.com/sausalito/ I don't know of anyone using or having used a private boat to make the commute.
      - dalke 2y ago
        When I was a kid in Miami, I read about people commuting to work by jet ski. This was before they replaced the Rickenbacker Causeway drawbridge with the William Powell Bridge, and the commute from Key Biscayne into Miami could be delayed and backed up, as boats had the right-of-way.
        ljf 2y ago
        I had a friend who lived in New Jersey in a water front property - he used to ride a jetski over to New York to stop for a drink at a bar in a marina. The issue was you had to pay marina fees to be allowed to dock there, so while it was fun it was actually a pretty pricey way to get to NY (and you'd be wearing damp clothes) - but he still thought it was a lot of fun. He was OK but apparently the was a lot of boat theft in that area too.
dredmorbius 2y ago
Marin's billboard ban is older than I'd thought, having been adopted in 1936 according to this article: <https://marinmagazine.com/community/history/history-of-a-highway/ https://marinmagazine.com/community/history/history-of-a-hig...> At least one billboard, along 101 at the highway cut between San Rafael and Larkspur, survived until the late 1970s or early 1980s, but was burned down in what has been described as the closest an act of arson has come to earning an award of commendation by the Marin County Board of Supervisors. More recently, a "flower billboard" was created, and in 2010 removed, along US-101 in Novato: <https://www.marinij.com/2010/08/24/controversial-flower-billboard-along-101-in-novato-is-taken-down/ https://www.marinij.com/2010/08/24/controversial-flower-bill...> (That article also places the county-wide ban more recently, in the 1970s.)

lostlogin 2y ago

The worst are the super bright lcd/led screen billboards. They are incredibly obnoxious. I’m surprised if they don’t case car crashes.

Mo3 2y ago
I'm sure they do
cchi_co 2y ago
[dead]
devilbunny 2y ago
Right up there with LED cop lights. Fucking blinding. I got stopped at a roadblock even before LED's, the highway patrol officer said "I wasn't sure you were going to stop, you nearly ran over [X] over there" and my reply was, "Your lights are so bright, and blue, and right here on the road, that I can't see a thing. I'm glad I didn't."

usrusr 2y ago

The benefits of billboards are a zero sum game, it's absurdly easy for the benefits of a ban to outweigh them. Here in Germany regulation of outside ads has zero novelty value, it's so much a given that I don't know anything about the history of it. And it turns out the benefits of a ban are much bigger than just more pleasant views, because the ad spend does not simply disappear. Much of it gets channeled into event sponsoring, sports clubs and the like, in short things that actually improve life for all instead of just providing some more passive income for property owners. It's a total no-brainer if there ever was one.

account42 2y ago
Still plenty of outside ads in Germany. The regulation needs to be stronger.

mynameisash 2y ago

This pretty much mirrors my experience: I live in Washington, and when I drive down the freeway, I see nothing but trees and mountains. When I go back to Minnesota to visit family, I'm bombarded with billboards -- often political or religious content. I don't miss that at all.