Comment 
Brisbane City Council will not be reviewing its City Cycle revenue raising billboards cluttering footpaths and distracting motorists. 
Three examples in the Valley at Gibbs Street, and St Pauls Tce have only had two complaints according to an advertising spokesman for the City Council. 
Brightly coloured advertising displays for 20 seconds before a 3 second transition to a new highly coloured image. 
Placed behind traffic lights they have the potential to cause inattention and confusion. 
Council approves its use of valuable footpath space on the edge of busy roads because it is generating revenue for their bicycle deal. 
AdShel bus shelters are allowed to block footpaths to ensure a better deal for advertisers. APN is allowed 12 metre wide billboards on key arterial roads. 
Brisbane roadsides are getting more cluttered and governments are the major player. 
The LNP has a huge billboard on Creek Road at a complicated intersection promoting PRENUP number plates.
Police clutter cars plastered with road safety messages have potential to distract and confuse motorists on busy roads. I don't claim there are specific incidents due to a particular sign but it is the overall impact fueling inattention and distraction.

Update 3 Feb 2013 : 
Fancy glass walled shelters at bus stops to enable in your face advertising next to busy roads remain a problem in the Mansfield area. With anti-socials roaming the streets smashing signs, shattering glass over the footpath, next to a school, it is time to come up with a better option till there is more maturity in the local area. Private operators are not allowed to clutter busy roads with signage but it remains acceptable for the council and its commercial mates. 

Roadside ads distract drivers
MONASH UNIVERSITY   
MONDAY, 23 MARCH 2009
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istock_timessquare.jpg
Visual clutter on the side of the road is a
safety hazard, especially for older drivers.
Image: iStockphoto
New Monash University research proves visual clutter around our roads, including prominent advertising, signs or billboards, can be a distraction hazard for drivers - especially older ones.
It found the distractions delay drivers' ability to detect a change around them - such as a vehicle changing lanes - by an average of half a second. Older drivers took the longest to react.
The comprehensive work from the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) has important implications for the design and regulation of road environments, and could lead to a new debate around the need for tighter advertising restrictions along our roads and highways.
"Driving on a typical major road is a complex activity, where drivers must process large amounts of visual information which continuously changes, and make decisions at speed," researcher Jessica Edquist said.
"The research is very clear: as drivers we can only look at and pay attention to one thing at a time. When we are looking at a sign or a billboard, we are not looking at the road, leading to a higher accident risk.
"The amount of visual information is increasing on our roads, due to higher traffic density, more complex traffic management systems, increased commercial roadside development and increasing pressure on road authorities to permit advertising next to major roads."
Ms Edquist conducted a series of tests with more than 100 drivers, almost half using MUARC's hi-tech advanced driving simulator. She found drivers were distracted by billboards - they drove more slowly, took longer to change lanes in response to road signs and made more errors when changing lanes.
Older drivers in particular had difficulty detecting changes on the road and in following road sign instructions in busy environments. The finding is crucial as, due to an ageing population, there are more people aged over 65 and more are staying on the road despite age.
Ms Edquist said road authorities should carefully regulate billboards, declaring billboard-free distances around areas of high driver workload such as intersections, merges and freeway exits.
"Road authorities should also remove excessive signage, and give advance warning of hazardous situations with ‘priming' road signs to spread the cognitive workload. These adjustments are especially important for busy roads with many other vehicles, cyclists or pedestrians," she said.
Her work has already led to changes in Queensland and will provide evidence to bolster the arguments made by road authorities that roadside advertising should sometimes be restricted on safety grounds.
Ms Edquist described three types of clutter: situational (mostly road traffic), designed (road markings and signage) and built (buildings, shop signs, and advertising billboards, making backgrounds visually complex). They needed to be considered together as they all contribute to driver workload.


 Brisbane for sale: Advertiser's paradise    January 17,

Brisbane is viewed as an outdoor advertiser's paradise thanks to local government's willingness to trade urban space with private enterprise in return for public goods, a top industry figure has said.
The characterisation follows the launch of eight new APN Outdoor “supersite” roadside panels along several key arterial roads in Brisbane on Monday – an ad format that can stretch over 12 metres wide.
Outdoor Media Association chief executive Charmaine Moldrich said the news indicated the strength of Brisbane's outdoor advertising market, which had flourished thanks to support at various government levels.
Ms Moldrich said it was now common in Brisbane for third-party advertisers to work with Brisbane City Council or the Department of Main Roads to fund public works in exchange for new ad space, such as the examples of Brisbane's AdShel bus shelters and JC Decaux CityCycle network.
Both schemes saw the council sign deals with each outdoor advertising firm, which would help deliver and maintain the projects at less cost to City Hall, but with more room for commercial messaging stretch across the city.
“I think that Queensland in a way is ahead of everyone – the public bike infrastructure is a model for the rest of the country – they're the only council in Australia that has that,” Ms Moldrich said.
“That's council saying 'we can't afford to build this infrastructure any more therefore we'll sell the concession for the advertising by getting someone else to build the infrastructure'.
“Whoever wins that tender gets to advertise on the walls of that infrastructure – they'll build, they'll pay to maintain it ... it's a $90 million yearly investment that our members make into infrastructure across Australia.”
Figures from the council, the authority responsible for licensing and regulating the 50 types of outdoor advertising signs covered in the city's by-laws, show Brisbane received 357 new applications for 658 signs in 2012, less than was received five years ago.
However the scale of advertising has gone up. Until two years ago, the council did not support advertising applications that exceeded 45 square metres, but a council spokeswoman said this was no longer the case.
“This was deemed too restrictive for the community,” she said.
“Council took a proactive approach and decided to consider larger than permitted signs on a case by case basis, taking into account community benefit and addressing the qualitative criteria of the policy.”
As a result, Brisbane last year saw ads upwards of 250 square metres installed across the city, including mega banners on Wickham Street, McLachlan and Ann streets, and skyboards spanning 92 square metres put up at three separate metropolitan locations.
That didn't mean all of Brisbane was for sale to the biggest bidder, according to the council's Lifestyle Committee chairman Krista Adams.
Cr Adams said the local advertising laws were enough to manage billboards across the city and the council was more than open to the idea of working with the advertising industry to deliver council works, such as the shared bicycle scheme.
“We always look for ways to deliver ratepayers of this city the best value,” she said.
“However I'm also committed to a clean, green, beautiful city therefore we have strict laws in place restricting advertising.
Cr Adams said one way the council minimised visual pollution was by proactively checking busy areas of the city to ensure people did not put up signage or billboards without the appropriate licence.
“I think the paradigm's really shifting," Ms Moldrich said.
"Probably, there is a very old fashioned view that all signage was visual pollution, whereas people are starting to understand that it's not just about the exchange – you pay for our infrastructure and we'll give you ad – but also those ads play a part in the vibrancy of the city.
"Think London, Paris, Tokyo, New York – people are quite contradictory, they say they hate signs, but they'll stand in front of Times Square to take a photo.
“Sometimes I feel the undertone is it's a necessary evil, but not only does it pay for infrastructure, it helps the community and it fuels a city's vibrancy.”