The argument in favour of these new signs, is that the ad company will remove a whole bunch of regular billboards in exchange for these new video signs. City staff have calculated that this will amount to an overall reduction in signage and help us “manage the impact and contribution of signage to the visual character of the City’s public realm.” They are wrong. Their math is horribly flawed because they are only looking at one factor: square feet of signage. They have no system for measuring the impact of factors such as brightness and motion. Personally, I’d rather have 100 static billboards in my neighbourhood – than a single LED billboard.