The drive to Calgary is worth a laugh, thanks to Joseph Kruis, an intern in the City of Calgary transportation department.
Every Tuesday after the workday has started in Calgary, Joseph Kruis can count on a handful of friends who will text him or Facebook messages with laughing tear emojis or comments like “nice.” They will convey the pun or joke that made them laugh a few minutes earlier, but Kruis is more likely to smile than to laugh out loud. You heard that joke message. Most likely it helped write it.
Kruis, 25, is the brains and joker sensibilities behind a new show that aims to bring some joy to Calgary’s monotonous motorists’ commute. Every Tuesday, various digital signs along the city’s main routes take a breather from their normally gray message in favor of something sunnier. Instead of “Airport trail in 20 minutes” or “Left lane incident ahead, expect delays,” a sign might read:
“You are not a firework. Don’t drive on. “
“Texting and driving? Oh no cell phone!
During the Calgary Stampede, the signs rang out with the naughty country song. Save a horse, ride a cowboy) with “Save a horse / Ride a taxi home”.
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The City of Calgary’s Department of Transportation calls them Traffic Tuesdays – each week, drivers are greeted with a message meant to raise awareness, safety messages and, ideally, a smile on their faces. City staff theorize that happy peak-hour drivers are less likely to succumb to road rage or make impulse mistakes.
The idea originated from a long-running safety campaign for the Iowa highway system, Message Monday. But it was Kruis who suggested that his department adapt the program to Calgary’s highways after seeing Iowans praise it during a webinar last November. He had only started working with the city seven months earlier as an engineer-in-training, working on several small improvements to the transportation network. I spent rush hours helping traffic technicians change the timing of the traffic lights, reverse lane directions, and change the messages on those digital signs.
When he was learning the sign system for the first time, a thought about the messages crossed his mind: “It’s dry, no human contact. It would be great to derobotize it, make it a more humane approach. ”The Iowa show showed him how, and soon his penchant for everyday phrases that sometimes make his fiancée’s eyes roll became part of his job.
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Kruis’s supervisor agreed to the idea, and civic managers jumped on board, provided they could peruse the messages. There’s an art to being funny on roadside public boards, Kruis and his colleagues have learned. First, with a maximum of 27 characters per banner frame, it is much more restrictive than Twitter. References to pop culture such as “Baby Yoda uses The Force / But he still needs a car seat” tend to be a hit, as do those addressing driver annoyances: “Camp in the Rockies / Not in the left lane “was a winner. In the reject pile are messages that sound remotely like swear words, like the July one that never shows “The stampede is over / Slow down.”
Iowa handed over its archive of messages to Kruis’ team, along with some caveats about its own mistakes, including using overly gloomy maxims. That state’s department of transportation received a setback for using “Crashes Don’t Kill Teens; bad decisions make. “
Calgary launched its weekly pilot program with the Baby Yoda car seat message (May 4, also known as Star Wars Day), causing confusion among drivers who thought it could be a unique “May 4”. But when it was advertised as a regular feature, they adopted it. The city invited residents to submit their own ideas and earned 250 in the first two weeks.
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As Kruis progresses to full-fledged engineer status, his resumeIt is Already presenting a well-received new civic program, he marvels at finding that rare engineering position where joking is part of the job. “When I told my fiancéIt isOur family on this project, “she says,” my future mother-in-law was like, God, she found a job that’s totally up her alley. “
No pun intended, surely.
This article appears in print in the November 2021 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the title “Come out in two smiles”. Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.
Reference-www.macleans.ca