Why is this street sign illegal?

Can you guess why the top sign is illegal and the bottom one is not? It's because he Federal government just doesn't like all caps—and it was forcing cities to rip down perfectly good all-cap signs and replace them with mixed-lettering signs. Until last week, that is—when common sense prevailed, and the Feds backed off on their demand. New York City alone projected the cost of changing the signs to be $27 million. Milwaukee would have needed $5 million. Even if the all-cap signs are harder to read, there is a sane way to handle this. Just replace the all-cap signs with mixed signs when they wear out. Is that so hard? Apparently it is, because it took our Federal government many months to capitulate. At the same time, I do understand that you want uniformity in traffic signs—you wouldn't want red stop signs in Iowa and purple ones in Minnesota. But ripping down a street sign only because it's all-caps? That's just bizarre. The only people in favor of that would be the sign manufacturers... hmmm.. better check their campaign contributions.Tweet