278 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



designed identifying graphics such as service club crests, calliphon 

 logotypes and symbol graphics; public accommodations could list 

 their types of rooms; vacancy signs could be illuminated by remote 

 leased-wire lines; rates could be posted if desired and pathfinder 

 symbols could be indicated. 



Elsewhere, pathfinder graphics could be permitted at or below the 

 scale of highway traffic signs to direct travelers. 



It is further suggested that some interested national organization 

 sponsor a national competition to investigate the sign-park concept. 

 Teams composed of attorneys, planners, architects, landscape archi- 

 tects, graphics artists or calligraphers, industrial designers, and others 

 would compete to establish the legal description, land-planning as- 

 pects, and a design demonstration of the idea. The winning team or 

 teams would then be commissioned to work with a municipality or 

 county willing to undertake the enactment of enabling legislation and 

 with an entrepreneur willing to undertake the first pilot project, to 

 bring a demonstration of the idea to fruition. 



The sponsoring organization could then evaluate the experience 

 and disseminate the results to all interested parties. 



JACK B. ROBERTSON.* This Nation is in the process of developing 

 a rapid transit policy. Many students of transportation expect some 

 of the major urban centers will start and substantially finish a rapid 

 transit system within the next decade. We should take a lesson from 

 the past and protect the roadsides of all surface rapid transit systems 

 from visual blight such as billboards, junkyards, dumps, and auto- 

 mobile wrecking yards. Failure to do this will result in the same road- 

 side blight we now find along our highways. 



A program of positive protection of the roadsides of surface rapid 

 transit systems should be a condition for Federal aid to planning and 

 construction of rapid transit systems. This will protect the invest- 

 ment in the system, promote more pleasant travel, and prevent pas- 

 sengers from becoming compulsory viewers of advertising signs. 



Many industrialized nations now convey information in the specific 

 interest of the motoring public by official roadside signs using inter- 

 national travel symbols. This system now has had enough use and 

 refinement that it can now be beneficially instituted in the United 

 States ; and this is recommended. 



*This is an extension of remarks made by Mr. Robertson during the panel 

 discussion. 



