Bad directions.

So when a chunk of local infrastructure is so poorly designed that it annoys thousands of people every year, but it's been that way for so long that many locals are used to it, is it a waste of taxpayer money to improve the design, or not?

It depends on whether the design improvement actually solves the problem. 

Based on the number of comments on the Star Tribune story, apparently the hottest topic in the Twin Cities isn't the Minnesota Senate race, but airport signage.  And apparently most of my fellow citizens are of the opinion that if you get lost on the way to the airport because of confusing signs, it's your own damn fault. 

A little background for the out-of-towners.

We have one major airport here in the Twin Cities, the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport, with one three-letter airport code, MSP.   That airport has two terminals.

1. What everyone calls the "Main Terminal," but which is really named the Charles A. Lindbergh Terminal, and which is served by all but a few airlines.
2. The "Humphrey Terminal," i.e., the Hubert H. Humphrey Terminal, which is served by AirTran, JetAmerica, IcelandAir, Southwest, Sun Country, and several charter lines including Aeroméxico.

So far this is not unusual for a mid-sized American city:  one airport, two terminals, check.  Here is the unusual part.  The two terminals are not accessed by the same exit on the highway.   You can take the train from one terminal to the other, but it isn't a trivial operation — we're not talking about a little airport peoplemover, I mean you can take the light-rail line from one stop to the next.  Let's just say that if you arrived at the wrong terminal with not much time to spare, you might well miss your plane.   (Below:  Google Map taking you from Humphrey to Lindbergh in nine minutes, not counting time spent in parking garages or figuring out you're in the wrong terminal.)

View Larger Map

Okay, so, here's where the signage comes into play.  Most cities I've been to with multiple terminals work like this.  You take the (only) exit from the highway that goes to the airport.  Once you're on the airport grounds, airport signs direct you to the correct terminal, usually by the airline you're flying.  Northwest flies out of here, USAirways out of here, etc. etc. etc.  Most cities, the key piece of information you need as you drive to the airport is what airline.  You can just sort of assume that this will get you to the right building.

Not so here.  As you're driving to the airport you are greeted with signs that tell you to take this exit for the Humphrey Terminal and that exit for the Lindbergh terminal.  No mention of airlines, charter vs. scheduled flights, domestic vs. international, or any such useful information.  Leaving you, perhaps a hapless non-Minnesotan, to guess whom Minnesotans hold in high enough regard to honor with the MAIN terminal name, and whom Minnesotans hold in, oh,  a sort of small auxiliary regard.  The erstwhile politician, or the famous aviator?   And wait a minute, if you're on a kind of a small airline anyway, are you even sure you belong in the main terminal?

OK, so the airports commission just voted $2.2 million to improve the signs by referring to the terminals as "1" and "2" (maybe that's a little laughable, but I think this is an improvement, at least if Lindbergh "Main" becomes "1" since at least the ordinal numbers imply a primary and a secondary terminal) and, more importantly, signs that tell drivers where to go for which airline.

Let's leave aside the possibility that the sum is exorbitant.  I do not have enough information to know whether $2.2 million is a good deal for the signage.  I haven't the foggiest idea how much highway signs cost, and none of the news articles have offered any useful context (how much does MNDOT spend on signage per year statewide, for instance?) I'll just take them at their word here.

So… the hostility in the comments on the article towards the improved signage is mind-blowing to me.  "If you're too stupid to find your way to the airport, you're too stupid to fly."  (Hey, maybe we should just eliminate all road signage while we're at it.)  Or "They should just put up one sign for international, one fo""r domestic."  (Huh?  International and domestic flights take off and land from both terminals.)  Or "Everybody knows you should find out which terminal you're going to ahead of time." (Not necessary in most American cities.)  Or, my favorite, "We don't need signs –how hard is it to read what's written on your ticket?"  (What is this artifact, this ticket you speak of?)

Anyway, I for one am glad they're fixing it, if only because it annoys me every time I drive by the signs.  I do hope they don't spend more on the signs than they need to, but matching the exits to the airlines strikes me as the minimum adequate signage.  Look, it would have been nice if they had done it right in the first place and not had to spend the money this year, but when government screws up I think we should expect them to fix it.   I'm glad there are so many people annoyed by government money-wasting, but the money-wasting happened long ago when they made the spectacularly bad signage from the highway.