County’s Electronic Road Sign Displayed Vulgar Message on Connecticut Avenue

MCDOT is investigating two incidents this week



A variable message sign on Jones Bridge Thursday alerted drivers to bikes and pedestrians. A sign placed nearby had displayed a vulgar message earlier this week. Credit: Joe Zimmermann

Drivers commuting on Connecticut Avenue or Jones Bridge Road might have noticed an unexpected message flashing from an electronic road sign this week.

Text on a large sign at the corner of the two roads alternated between “Expect Delays” and a sexually vulgar phrase on two different nights before the Montgomery County Department of Transportation restored the original messages.

The explicit three-word phrase first appeared late Monday night, Esther Bowring, a transportation department spokeswoman, said Thursday.

On Tuesday morning, county transportation workers found a lock to a back panel on the sign was broken, she said. They fixed the lock and added a second one.

But on Wednesday night, the message reappeared, the same phrase in bright yellow capital letters.

When workers checked the sign on Thursday, both locks were still intact.

Bowring said she isn’t aware of a way to change the text on the sign without using a keyboard in the back panel; the sign isn’t connected to a network. Officials don’t believe the lewd message was done by a staff member.

“We don’t really know right now how they got into the sign,” she said.

The sign is one of four variable message signs owned by the county’s transportation department. A sign was not at the same location Thursday afternoon, but there was a sign a block away from the intersection on Jones Bridge Road, near Spring Valley Road.

“Caution bikes and peds on road,” the sign read.

The transportation department is investigating the sign tampering and has taken “some additional measures” to prevent future tampering, Bowring said. She didn’t specify what measures because she said she didn’t want the information getting to anyone who might try to change the sign’s messages again.