For Mike Ivanuska, 20, and John O’Neal, 18, the most hazardous part of stealing the No Parking sign near the corner of Tenth and Maine streets was uprooting it from the ground.
“We had three people rocking back and forth on the sign for ten minutes just to get it out of the dirt,” O’Neal, said.
The stolen No Parking sign, now dislodged from its post and enshrined on Ivanuska’s otherwise bare bedroom wall, is an example of the mark college students can leave on a city like Lawrence. Stolen street signs, such as the one
snatched by Ivanuska and O’Neal, occupy much of the Department of Traffic Engineering’s resources, said Traffic Engineer David Woosley. In a city with more than 30,000 college students, the signs are stolen for a number of different reasons. But Lawrence’s status as one of Kansas’ most likely sites for street sign theft remains the same.“Special road signs with a special meaning for people are the first to go,” said Lee Holmes, the Kansas state traffic signing engineer. “People like to take signs with unique wording.”
By Holmes definition, Lawrence’s most uniquely worded signs would be the ones located on High Drive. Street name signs including High Drive and Tennessee and Louisiana streets are the most popular choices for sign thieves, Woosley said, followed by No Parking and speed bump signs. All together, in the past two years an average of 426 signs were stolen from Lawrence streets annually.
The tendency to steal street name signs means very few Kansas highway signs are
In Kansas, college towns have a much higher rate of sign theft than cities without large universities. Of the 10 most populous Kansas cities, Lawrence and Manhattan, home to the University of Kansas and Kansas State, report the highest number of sign thefts per capita. Lawrence has one sign stolen for every 192 people and Manhattan has one for every 122 people. The city closest to those numbers is Kansas City, Kan., which has one sign stolen for every 252 people. In contrast, cities lacking large universities have a much lower rate of sign theft. Shawnee has one sign stolen for every 720 people, Salina has one for every 836 people and Overland Park loses one sign for every 4,709 people.
Debbie Rollins, Lawrence’s traffic control technician, said she has observed patterns in the thefts that point to college students as the primary culprits.
“We lose the most signs in September because all the students are back at school,” Rollins said. “And every May we get a bunch of signs returned from the dorms after kids move out of their rooms and the University finds what they stole.”
The Department of Traffic Engineering, which is in charge of street signal and sign maintenance, has a yearly budget of $55,000. When street signs go missing in Lawrence, the cost to replace them can consume over half of the budget, leaving less money to maintain of stop lights and pavement markings. But despite the relatively high number of sign thefts, it is rare for the thieves to get caught.
“It’s hard for the police department to keep an eye on every sign in town. They have bigger responsibilities than watching for kids who steal signs,” Rollins said.
Those caught tampering with any traffic signal can be charged under Kansas law with a misdemeanor that carries a fine of up to $500 and the possibility of one month in jail.
“A traffic control sign such as a yield or stop sign that is stolen can present a danger to pedestrians and the motoring public for obvious reasons,” said Sgt. Paul Fellers of the Lawrence Police Department. This kind of theft, called aggravated tampering, constitutes signal tampering that could result in injury or death and is a felony offense that carries a fine of up to $100,000 and the possibility of 13 months in jail.
But rather than trying to catch sign thieves, Rollins said, Lawrence has focused on becoming more efficient at replacing signs after they go missing. The Department of Traffic Engineering recently incorporated a series of aerial maps and GPS information for Lawrence to help traffic officials locate and fix or replace damaged or missing signs.
Despite improved oversight, the number of signs the traffic engineering field staff will need to replace is nearly impossible to predict.
“It’s different every year,” Rollins said. “It all depends on what the students feel like doing from year to year.”
“We stole our sign on impulse,” O’Neal said. “We just wanted a novelty thing to hang on the wall.”
And for now, Lawrence appears to be safe from another sign theft masterminded by O’Neal and Ivanuska.
“I’ll keep this sign in my room,” Ivanuska said. “But there’s no way I’ll steal another one. It takes way too much work.”