FILE: San Antonio will allow eight electronic billboards to be put up along highways annually, so long as at least 32 traditional billboards come down.
Marc J. Kawanishi/San Antonio Express-News
San Antonio Express-News
Molly Smith, molly.smith@express-news.net
June 01, 2023 at 03:49PM
Starting in 2024, the city each year will allow eight conventional, or static, billboards to be converted to digital with one caveat: The billboard operator must remove at least four of its existing traditional billboards within the city.
“We want less billboards in general,” Michael Shannon, development services director, said of the city code change.
The City Council unanimously approved the change Thursday, which will lead to more messaging delivered via LED displays on computer-controlled billboards. By allowing operators to quickly rotate advertising for multiple customers on a single display, digital billboards can be more profitable for operators than traditional print billboards.
New billboards have been banned within city limits since 1985. There now are 863 billboards in San Antonio, according to city data.
Though District 9 City Councilman John Courage expressed concerns over whether digital billboards distract drivers, he ultimately supported the change.
Shannon cited a 2014 Federal Highway Administration study that found digital billboards posed no safety risk to drivers. In the year after the city began allowing digital billboards in 2008, traffic data showed “no increase in traffic accidents or anything like that” around the electronic signs, he told the council.
A city survey found that 81 percent of respondents favored fewer billboards within city limits. Over half of the respondents supported swapping out traditional billboards for fewer digital ones.
Digital billboards are not permitted downtown, on U.S. 281 near downtown, in areas with historic designations or in the Hill Country Gateway Corridor, which spans Interstate 10 from UTSA Boulevard to Boerne Stage Road.
One change, however, will be coming to the Hill County Gateway Corridor: Come January, businesses lining the interstate can install digital signs on their premises.
Since 2015, “on-premise” signs could only be static in this corridor. These signs are far smaller than a traditional billboard, Shannon said.
molly.smith@express-news.net