You're examples only relate to the first two, where you can always park, but sometimes you have to pay and sometimes you don't. It's easy in those cases to only specify when you have to pay, even when the schedule is different on Sunday (like your third example).
When you have to add in additional information about when you cannot park (for cleaning, snow removal, altered traffic patterns during heavy commute times, etc), now you need two signs. Well, or two notices on the same sign. You can park for free if it's not a time on either notice. This is in the example at the top of the article.
Those three examples are only different in the reasons given for the time-frame. You don't need to provide reasons, they're irrelevant, someone who wants to park somewhere cares whether it's illegal or not.
What is it about US streets that makes them so much more filthy than other streets that they not to be fully vacated in order to clean them sufficiently?
The only example for "irregular" no parking times I've seen in Germany are special exceptions for markets (typically Wednesday and Sunday, but the sign won't tell you if the market is cancelled on a particular day for a particular reason and you won't get towed or fined if you then park there when the market isn't happening) or special occasions (e.g. a circus) where they put up a temporary sign a week in advance.
I guess Germans really are more efficient (while simultaneously being more in love with having rules for every eventuality).
Agreed. Of course, we can now argue whether this level of granularity is unnecessarily complicated.
However: it's hard to argue that the three cases that I listed are too many rules, yet it's easy to see that they can cause too many signs using the OP's design. Such a simplification made the point much clearer, but I should have made that explicit.
Of course, that has its own problems, (Power, vandalism, bugs ...) but it would help drivers a LOT. As the article said, no one cares about WHY they can't park, usually. It's only "can I park here right now?" that matters in most cases.
While true, the second most important thing is "can I park here for as long as I need?"
"Free parking (1h 45m remaining)" doesn't help if you want to park for 2 hours and don't know if the next time period is "no parking" or "max 1 hour parking".
The third most important thing is likely knowing about some time in the future, like "will my visiting friend be able to park here on Saturday evening?"
Actually, the time limit on paid parking doesn't necessarily mean that you can only leave your car in that paid space for two hours. it means you can only pay for two (or whatever) hours of parking at a time.
- Different sets of rules for commercial or permitted vehicles
They could post two of the proposed signs, one for commercial and one for noncommercial vehicles, for example, but standing rules are going to be harder to add to that design without making it more confusing.
Having a single (different) sign for each audience makes a lot more sense than a different sign for each rule or timeslot. That is, commercial vehicles and pedestrians can each have their own sign, and only when necessary.
Then at least I know that I'm looking at all of the information that pertains to me, and that this information isn't contradictory.
Yeah I wondered about that, and guessed wrong. I'm used to seeing the words "idling" or "stopping" for cars and "loitering" for people, and never "standing".
I suppose if you want to put non-parking rules (e.g. idling rules) on a parking sign, and then complain that the parking sign is too complicated, then that's a different problem.
The whole point to limiting signeage is that the traffic regulators must keep the rules simple enough so that they're short enough so that someone driving past the sign can fully understand it without stopping and/or endangering traffic.
Need temporary exceptions for snow removal? Change the signs. Can't afford to change the signs so often? Don't make so many and complicated exceptions or schedules.
You can make a really reasonable system by only using simple signs in the form "[park here/don't park here/pay-park here] IF [time-range-sign] OTHERWISE default". Many countries are successfully doing this - my home city is just fine and most of the parking signs are either (a) no parking here; (b) pay-parking on workdays 7:00-21:00 (otherwise default free-parking); (c) no-parking on 7:00-19:00 on workdays (to free up a lane for traffic) or (d) parking forbidden except permit #xyz.
There are three options:
- You can park here for free
- You must pay to park here
- You cannot park here
You're examples only relate to the first two, where you can always park, but sometimes you have to pay and sometimes you don't. It's easy in those cases to only specify when you have to pay, even when the schedule is different on Sunday (like your third example).
When you have to add in additional information about when you cannot park (for cleaning, snow removal, altered traffic patterns during heavy commute times, etc), now you need two signs. Well, or two notices on the same sign. You can park for free if it's not a time on either notice. This is in the example at the top of the article.