Your parents can finally find your apartment at 16th Avenue and High Street again.
For many years, High Street was unmarked at almost every intersection due to college students removing them from posts and taking them home. Prior to this, High Street signs had already been replaced approximately 350 times. After a hiatus in replacements, High Street was unmarked for quite some time before a news station couldn’t find its location, which attracted the surrounding media.
“It got national media attention for a while because a local television station couldn’t find a single High Street sign,” said Tom Larsen, Eugene city traffic engineer. “We have since made some changes on how we mount those signs and now they are a lot more difficult to steal.”
Missing street signs is not uncommon in Eugene. Signs go missing frequently and, according to the City of Eugene, approximately 2,300 regulatory signs are repaired and more than 1,000 street signs and 350 other signs are replaced every year.
“Overall there are about 32,000 signs in town,” Larsen said. “When something like a sign goes down we send someone out 24/7 to go and replace it. We respond to signs missing on a complaint basis and every year or so we go out and check signs to make sure they are in good condition and still there.”
According to Eugene law, the city is required to have driver-related signs, such as stop signs and speed indicators. However, it is not required to have signs signifying the name of a street. Larsen explains that putting street names up is simply a courtesy to citizens rather than a city requirement. This does not mean that signs are simply up for grabs and will go unnoticed. Street signs cost anywhere from $20 to $30 depending on the length of the name. Signs that are stolen with longer names such as “Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.” are considered by law to be second-degree theft, but Oak Street’s may not have such grave consequences.
“If UOPD encounters street signs in private possession, the signs would be confiscated,” UOPD Communications Director Kelly McIver said. “Signs remain the property of the city or the government entity that paid for them and placed them.”
Regardless of what sign it is, stealing a street sign is considered a misdemeanor, according to Eugene police, but could also be a higher-level offense if the stolen sign led to an injury or death. For example, if an ambulance could not find a victim because the lack of a street sign, the theft would be taken more seriously.
More recently the construction of street signs have been improved and a better adhesive has been installed to prevent sign theft.