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Highway Beautification Act |
In the United States, highway beautification is the subject of the Highway Beautification Act, passed in the Senate on September 16, 1965, the House on October 8, 1965, and signed by the President on October 22, 1965.1 This created "23 USC 131" or Section 131 of Title 23, United States Code (1965), commonly referred to as "Title I of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, as Amended".2
The act called for control of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain types of signs, along the nation's growing Interstate Highway System and the existing federal-aid primary highway system. It also required certain junkyards along Interstate or primary highways to be removed or screened and encouraged scenic enhancement and roadside development.1
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The HBA allows billboards to be erected virtually everywhere -- in any commercial/industrial area adjacent to interstate and federal-aid primary highways. But the guidelines as to what constitutes commercial/industrial activity are extremely lax. In many states, a single general store could generate six 1,200-square-foot (110 m2) billboards, a total of 7,200 square feet (670 m2) of sign space, roughly four times the size of an average house. In many states, activists report that sign companies have built sham businesses to secure the necessary state permit.According to the US Department of Transportation Inspector General, the HBA is "too liberal in permitting new signs" to be constructed.3
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The HBA makes it virtually impossible to remove nonconforming billboards. Amortization is a commonly used method of billboard removal. The idea is simple and fair to give the billboard operator a grace period of five to eight years to remove it, during which he can recoup his investment. Despite amortization's fairness and the repeated court rulings that it is constitutional, the billboard lobby convinced Congress in 1978 to prohibit amortization along interstate and federal-aid primary highways. Thus, nonconforming billboards are protected under the HBA unless state and local governments pay taxpayer money to remove them. In 1978 the Secretary of Transportation accurately predicted the amendment "would undermine efforts to control scenic blight along our highways." According to the Federal Highway Administration, the prohibition of amortization has kept over 38,000 billboards standing despite local ordinances seeking to remove them. No one knows how much removal would cost. So far the federal government has spent $250 million in compensation to billboard companies with virtually no impact.4
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