Fayetteville is joining a growing list of communities across the U.S. grappling with a new trend in billboards: bright, broadcast-quality digital messages that typically change every six to eight seconds.

The city already has two of the billboards, which look like giant flat-screen TVs sitting 30 feet off the ground. Lamar Advertising, the area’s largest billboard company, wants to put up 11 more across the city.

But government and industry officials can’t agree whether the electronic signs are a safe form of advertising or a dangerous distraction to drivers that mar the landscape.

The technology is so new that some North Carolina cities, such as Charlotte and Asheville, are playing catchup.

Asheville’s government voted this month to ban digital billboards downtown and to regulate everything about them, from the height of the letters based on the road’s speed limit to the intensity of the glare. Last fall, Charlotte passed rules requiring digital billboards to be farther apart than conventional signs, and voted to allow electronic versions only along interstates and near industry.

The number of digital signs is relatively small but is expected to proliferate as the technology improves and the price drops. Of the estimated 450,000 billboards across the U.S., only 800 are digital, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.
Durham city planners say they don’t allow digital billboards, but Fairway Outdoor Advertising recently asked officials there to amend that rule.

Fayetteville wasn’t paying much attention to the debate until two of the signs appeared last year — a double-sided digital billboard on Raeford Road near the All American Freeway and a single-faced digital sign farther north along the freeway near Yadkin Road. The signs’ bright ads showing scantily clad models for a cosmetic surgery clinic were eye-catching and — at least to some residents and City Council members — offensive.

The billboard industry says the innovation allows several advertisements at one location, reducing the need for multiple billboards of the conventional vinyl-and-glue variety. And the electronic screens can be quickly updated for public service announcements, such as Amber Alerts.

60-day moratorium

Fayetteville planners have scrambled to draft changes to ordinances that would place new restrictions on digital billboards. The City Council in April adopted a 60-day moratorium on digital billboards until it can consider those changes June 9.

The ideas include banning the placement of any new digital billboards. Or, if the city continues to allow them, they could be restricted like Asheville has done.

Jimmy Teal, the city’s planning director, likened his department’s response to electronic signs to what happened in the mid-1990s, when communities began regulating the placement of communication towers being put up to meet the growing demand for cell phone network coverage.

“The main thing is to try to get a handle on them,” Teal said.
Lamar Advertising has filed two lawsuits against the city. The suits, filed in the past five weeks, essentially seek the same thing: to allow more digital billboards in Fayetteville.

The question that some members of the City Council and the Fayetteville Planning Commission have is whether the new technology is safe for motorists. Mostly because of those concerns, the Planning Commission has recommended denying three more Lamar requests for digital billboards along Raeford Road. The council is scheduled to hold public hearings and vote on each of those requests when it meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall.

Because the hearings are quasi-judicial and require speakers to be sworn in, the city attorney has advised the council against forming opinions — or even making public statements — about the cases before Tuesday’s meeting.

Two traffic studies last year sponsored by the Foundation of Outdoor Advertising Research and Education found no correlation between digital signs and crashes. The group studies issues for the billboard industry.

Lamar has cited those studies in its quest for more digital signs.
But the studies were criticized as being flawed and misleading in October by a traffic safety consultant hired by the Maryland State Highway Administration. The consultant advised local governments there to not rely on the studies’ findings.

One advocacy group, Scenic America in Washington, which seeks to remove billboards and overhead wires from roadways, says the bright screens of digital billboards might turn drivers’ attention away from the highway.

Neil Yarborough, a Fayetteville lawyer representing Lamar Advertising in its suits against the city, said drivers already have myriad distractions, including cell phones, DVD players in the back seat and glare from a setting sun.

He said smaller electronic signs with moving pictures and letters, such as those at drug stores and at the Crown Center, don’t seem to bother drivers.

No studies

Jeff Golimowski, a spokesman for the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, said digital billboards can be quickly updated with warnings of blocked roads or fugitives.

“They really do a lot of good to the community in addition to serving advertisers in a better way and helping local businesses,” he said.

Golimowski said there has been no study done linking digital billboards to car wrecks.

That’s true, said Doug Hecox, spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration, which last September issued a memo declaring digital billboards safe from other federal rules prohibiting billboards that flash or use moving lights.

“We think they are probably OK, but we don’t know,” he said. “There is no scientific basis for us to ban these signs.”

That is why, Hecox said, the Federal Highway Administration has begun a comprehensive, one-of-a-kind and neutral study into digital signs and their influence on traffic. That study is due at the end of 2009.

Some opponents say the federal highway memo helped spawn more digital billboards, even though states or local governments are free to impose tighter restrictions.

Cumberland County regulates conventional and digital billboards the same, allowing them in industrial and heavy-commercial areas.

Scott Wheeler, the outdoor advertising coordinator for the N.C. Department of Transportation, said the state is awaiting on the federal highway study next year before considering any changes on billboard regulations outside of cities.

“We are probably going to make some changes in the future,” he said.