Businesses erect ads mimicking public road signs

Three government agencies charged with overseeing the city's road signs said Monday they had limited or no authority to regulate the privately erected signs mimicking public road signs that have sprung up around Shanghai.

The signs resemble the blue road signs that are a common sight along most major streets in Shanghai, but rather than tell drivers about the upcoming cross streets, they point the way to nearby businesses, according to a report in the Youth Daily.

The newspaper found seven signs around downtown Shanghai that provide directions and other information about different local businesses, including a tutoring center, a tea market and a chain hotel, the report said. The signs have white lettering that in some cases matches the font of public road signs.

According to local signage regulations, police oversee the city's road signs and the road management authority supervises signs that direct residents to public services.

Shanghai traffic police won't remove the privately erected signs unless they look very similar to official road signs, said Lu Feng, press officer for the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau. Lu said police removed one such sign in Yangpu district after reading a complaint about it online.

The road management authority is only in charge of overseeing the green road signs on the city's highways, said Dong Hui, the authority's press officer.

Meanwhile, the Shanghai City Appearance and Environmental Sanitation Administration Bureau said that they only regulate advertisements erected on walls or buildings.

If left uncontrolled, signs that mimic public road signs could pose a danger because they can obscure actual road signs and confuse drivers, said Pan Haixiao, a professor of city planning at Tongji University.

And there is evidence that businesses are interested in increasing their signage above the roads. An employee from the tutoring center on Caoxi Road, which erected one such sign, said that it plans to put up a sign for each of their other branches, the Youth Daily reported.

An employee surnamed Qian from Shanghai Shenfei Advertisement Company, a firm that erects such signs for local businesses, told a Global Times reporter posing as a potential client that local authorities will step in to remove the signs. However, he added that he had helped another client in the same area erect a road sign after the client paid a sum of money to build up his connections.

"If you have connections, you only need to pay 5,000 yuan to produce the sign. Otherwise, you can choose to let us help you by paying extra money," Qian said.

He said that the fee to maintain those connections is 25,000 yuan for the first year and 12,000 yuan for each additional year. "If someone reports the road sign to authorities, we can help you handle the problem," he said.